BEAUTIFULLY DAMNED:
RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION IN COLERIDGE AND BYRON
by
Matt Slykhuis
B.A., University of Northern British Columbia, 2005

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UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
April 2011
©Matt Slykhuis, 2011

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Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of damnation as it appears in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel," and in George Gordon Lord Byron's "Cain: A
Mystery," "The Giaour," and "Manfred." The concept of imagination is central to each of these
texts, and in each case the damnation of the respective protagonists is precipitated by those
characters' inability to rightly perceive the world around them—a failure of imagination. While
modern criticism has tended to sideline discussion of the theological aspects of the imagination,
this thesis joins a recent movement in recognizing that the divorce of religious concerns from
Romantic criticism can only result in an incomplete understanding of the texts in question.
Christianity played an important role in the lives of both Coleridge and Byron, and the
cosmology, ontology, and eschatology that appear in their works are intimately connected to a
form of Christian theology (whether orthodox, heterodox, or heretical). For both Coleridge and
Byron a theological conception of the imagination—what I call "religious imagination"—lies at
the heart of the human experience. Each of the protagonists discussed herein experiences a living
hell, yet in each case, it is the degree to which those individuals exercise religious imagination
that determines whether their experience will be an endless suffering, or whether it will lead to
redemption and thus mark that individual as "beautifully damned."

Ill

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract

ii

Table of Contents

iii

Acknowledgements

v

Introduction

1
2
7
10
12

Imagination as a Coleridgean Cosmogony
Byron as a Poet of Religious Imagination
Religious Imagination and the Beautiful Damnation
Overview
Chapter 1: Faith in the Age of Reason
The De-supernaturalization of Religion
The Re-supernaturalization of Religion
"Mariner" and "Cain": What Happens When Ideals Fail

14
16
18

Chapter 2: Coleridge's "Mariner"
Three Stages toward the Attainment of Religious Imagination
The First Stage: Rationalism and Supernaturalism as
Crimes against Imagination
The Second Stage: The Return Journey as Dark Night of the Soul
The Third Stage: Communion with the "One Life"
Conclusion: The Beauty of Eternal Penance

27
37
41
44

Chapter 3: Byron's "Cain"
Act 1: "Choose betwixt love and knowledge"
Act 2: Reason Repudiates Itself
Act 3: Cain's Curse and Crime
Conclusion: Death becomes Him

48
51
55
61
65

Chapter 4: Believing and Speaking: the Healing of Chaos in "Christabel"
A World of Chaos
Two Imaginations
Confessions and Prayers of Hope

68
72
77
82

Chapter 5: Dead Men Walking: The Curse and Crime of Cain in "The Giaour"
and "Manfred"
The Curse of Cain
The Crime of Cain
". . . something worse than death"?

86
90
100
104

24

IV

Closing Remarks

108

Works Cited

HO

v

Acknowledgments

This thesis would not have been possible without the continued support of my friends and
family. A special debt of gratitude is owed to my longsuffering wife, Lindsey, and our children
Keturah and Lincoln. Additionally, I am grateful to the English Department and to the Graduate
Office at UNBC for the generous grants that enabled me to attend numerous conferences where I
could share my research and receive feedback from scholars much more learned and experienced
than myself. Finally, I would like to thank my Master's supervisor, Kevin Hutchings, for his
encouragement, advice, and untiring willingness to help me revise and focus my research.
Without the help and guidance of those around me this thesis could not have been completed, nor
would it have been as gratifying or enjoyable.

Introduction
The concept of imagination is central to Romanticism. The privileging of imagination and, with
it, the idea of originality, is one of the key markers delineating the Romantics' revolutionary
break from earlier ideas of art as imitation. As M.H. Abrams so famously described it, where art
had previously been viewed as a mirror that reflected the universe, the Romantics shifted the
focus to the poet as a fountain overflowing or a lamp shedding its light (Mirror 57). This
Romantic preoccupation with expression over imitation is deeply rooted in the concept of
imagination. Largely for this reason, Romantic criticism has, since its inception, been defining
and redefining imagination. Most often, scholars have begun this process by examining
Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798) and Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
(1817)—which contains what is probably the most comprehensive Romantic expression of the
imagination. Using Wordsworth and Coleridge as a starting point, scholars have attempted to
trace the origins of the Romantic imagination, have debated its meaning and purpose, and have
explored how other Romantic writers borrowed, adapted, and even rejected the Wordsworthian
and Coleridgean conceptions of imagination.
The purpose of this thesis is to add to this ongoing conversation. Despite the tremendous
amount of scholarship that has developed around the concept of imagination, every age has its
blind spots. It is my intent herein to address a couple of apparent blind spots in the Romantic
criticism of the last century. The first of these oversights is in regard to Coleridge's theological
understanding of the imagination as the "repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation
in the infinite I AM" {Biographia Ch. 13). To marginalize the theological implications of the
imagination is like discussing Coleridge's "Christabel" without reference to the character
Geraldine—she may frustrate a clear understanding of the poem, but the text would be greatly

2

diminished without her. The second oversight that I will address is the little-discussed presence
of a deeply theological conception of the imagination in Byron's writings. I contend that the
theological ambiguity of Byron's portrayals of religion, faith, and the divine should not pre-empt
discussion of this theme. On the contrary, this ambiguity is an important part of what makes
Byron's contribution to the theory of imagination so original and interesting.

Imagination as a Coleridgean Cosmogony
Critical discussion of Coleridge's theory of imagination has generally tended to focus on the
theory's literary implications. In many ways this is appropriate. Coleridge was a poet and literary
critic, and the implications of his ideas on literature should be carefully considered.
Unfortunately, this critical trend has led to an effacement of important non-literary aspects of
Coleridge's conception of the imagination. In Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion (2000)
Douglas Hedley notes that "the institutional parameters of twentieth-century English Literature
have tended to marginalize the religious and philosophical core of Coleridge's thought" (3). It is
not that critics have ignored these religious or philosophical aspects, but they have often
relegated them to a place of secondary importance. This is, perhaps, nowhere as evident as in
discussions of Coleridge's conception of the primary and secondary imaginations. In his muchdebated passage from the Biographia, Coleridge writes,
The Imagination . . . I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary Imagination
I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human perception, and as a repetition
in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary
Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet
still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree,

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and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or
where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and
to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and
dead. (Biographia Ch. 13)
By alluding to God's statement of identity in Exodus 3:14—"I AM THAT I AM"—Coleridge
grounds the imagination in the nature of God. For Coleridge, it is the primary imagination that
humans use when they engage in the common process of perception and the simultaneous act of
constructing (or creating) the world for themselves. This perceptive and creative act is, for
Coleridge, analogous to divine creation. The secondary imagination, then, since it differs from
the primary "only in degree," is also intimately connected to divine creation. In light of this
passage (the only passage where Coleridge distinguishes between primary and secondary
imaginations), it is difficult to think of discussing Coleridge's theory of imagination without
connection to his theological beliefs. Because this sort of discussion does not sit well with
secular twentieth- and twenty-first century critical values, many scholars have marginalized
Coleridge's connection of imagination to divine creation. This has typically been accomplished
either by relegating the reference to divine creation to the realm of metaphor, or by choosing to
privilege the secondary imagination (which is more clearly connected to literature anyway) over
the primary.
The first of these approaches is evident as early as John Livingston Lowes' magisterial
work, The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of Imagination (1927). Coleridge Studies is
much indebted to Lowes' book for its revival of critical interest in Coleridge, and for its
comprehensive examination of the source material for some of Coleridge's major works. In
Xanadu Lowes repeatedly compares the imaginative process to divine creation bringing order to

4

chaos (12, 73, 142); however, Lowes' meaning is metaphorical and his discussion of the
imagination remains purely literary and non-theological. For Lowes, the imagination is not some
form of divine transmission—what he calls "some alien visitant"—but rather is "an agency
which operates through faculties of universal exercise upon that streaming chaos of impressions
through which we hourly move" (73). It is a sort of genius that is evinced in Coleridge by the
ability to bring together diverse sources to create something new. For Lowes, then, the
imagination is a universal human faculty that can be understood better through comparison to the
divine act of creation in Genesis, but not as being of the same nature as that act.
A similar approach can be found in M.H. Abrams' influential Natural Supernaturalism
where, as the title suggests, the supernatural is naturalized. Here Abrams writes,
The Romantic enterprise was an attempt to sustain the inherited cultural order against
what to many writers seemed the imminence of chaos; and the resolve to give up what
one was convinced one had to give up of the dogmatic understructure of Christianity, yet
to save what one could save of its experiential relevance and values, may surely be
viewed by the disinterested historian as a display of integrity and of courage. (68)
This approach presents the Romantics as less concerned with traditional Christian conceptions of
the universe and of God, than with the value of those conceptions as metaphors for human
experience. While this is certainly true for some Romantic projects, it is a problematic assertion
in regard to Coleridge, and even Byron, because it reverses the importance of the two forms of
imagination. If religion exists, as Abrams seems to suggest, to provide a metaphor to help
humans understand their existence, then it is, in fact, the secondary imagination that is
privileged—for religion becomes a sort of poetic act, a creative expression that stands for
something other than itself. If, however, religion exists as a collective perception of reality—that

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is, that human belief in God is not merely a desire for something transcendent, but an actual
belief in a divine being—then it is the primary imagination that is privileged. Ultimately, then,
by limiting religious expression to metaphor, this view effectively achieves the same end as the
second approach, which is to elevate the secondary imagination above the primary.
The subordination of the primary imagination to the secondary can probably be traced to
Shawcross's 1907 edition of the Biographia where he argued that the primary imagination is the
"organ of common perception" and the secondary "is the same power in a heightened degree"
(272). This interpretation was commonly accepted by many Coleridge scholars including Robert
Penn Warren, who saw the secondary imagination as "imagination in its value-creating capacity"
(31), as well as I.A. Richards (58), Basil Willey (196-9), and by critics like Thomas McFarland
and James Engell who are interested in reading Coleridge in light of his German influences. For
example, in Imagination and Originality (1985), Thomas McFarland interprets Coleridge's
theory of imagination in light of Tetens' thought, which elevates the secondary imagination
above the primary (101-3). McFarland applies this to Coleridge, claiming that "the secondary
imagination . . . named as such only in chapter 13, seems really to be the imagination Coleridge
customarily talks about elsewhere and to be called secondary only because of the primary
imagination. The latter is the true newcomer" (106). Similarly, James Engell reads Coleridge in
light of the German philosopher Schelling, arriving at the conclusion that Coleridge meant for
the secondary imagination to be read as "more important" (307) than the primary.
The conception of the imagination that informs this thesis is in agreement with those
listed above in that it defines the primary imagination as the perception of all humans which halfperceives and half-creates the world around us (Willey 195), and the secondary as that which
enables poetic creation. Where my definition of the imaginations differs from traditional

6

Coleridge scholarship, however, is in statements like Willey's that all humans are '"Miniature
creators' perhaps . . . But not poets: for that, we need something more—the Secondary
Imagination" (197). The secondary imagination does not elevate the poet above the average
human, and it certainly does not elevate poetic creation above divine creation.
My conception of the two forms of imagination is in keeping with Jonathan
Wordsworth's argument in "The Infinite I AM: Coleridge and the Ascent of Being," where he
points out the untenable nature of claims for the supremacy of the secondary imagination (26-7).
My position is that the secondary imagination is "secondary," not because it is lesser than the
primary, but because it serves it. The secondary imagination is similar to a prophetic utterance in
that its purpose is to enable "true" perception, to make clear what is already present, but has been
hidden from view or distorted. For Coleridge, the primary imagination is what connects all
humans to the Creator and what constitutes the world around us—what could be greater for a
Christian poet? The secondary imagination, then, is a tool to aid the primary. It functions to place
human perception under a new light, "like moonlight. . . diffused over a known and familiar
landscape" (Biographia Ch 14).
If the primary imagination is, indeed, primary and greatest, then its theological
implications must be addressed. It is the purpose of this thesis to join in a recent tradition that has
begun to acknowledge the importance of religion to studies of the imagination. Some of the
scholars who have begun this movement include J. Robert Barth, Ronald Wendling, and Douglas
Hedley. Eminent among these is J. Robert Barth, whose lifetime of Coleridge scholarship
focused on the importance of Coleridge's theology to his poetry and conception of imagination.
In Romanticism and Transcendence (2003), Barth asserts that "imagination is of its very nature a
religious act" (I), and it is on this premise that my own endeavour rests. In The Symbolic

7

Imagination: Coleridge and the Romantic Tradition (2001) Barth describes Coleridgean
imagination as "the symbol-making faculty" (34). For Barth, the Coleridgean symbol is a sort of
sacrament—i.e., that in which the human and divine interpenetrate; "a sensible sign . . . pointing
to something beyond itself (39). My argument is deeply rooted in this unabashedly Coleridgean
understanding of the religious imagination. It is my intent to develop this understanding further,
however, by exploring the relation and function of the primary and secondary imaginations
within this theological framework, and then by grounding my study in both the prose and poetic
works of Coleridge. The implications of this restoration of religion to the definition of
imagination are considerable and apply not merely to Coleridge studies, but to Romantic
scholarship in general. Though my theory of religious imagination has application for each of the
major Romantics, the scope of this project forces me to limit my discussion to two of the English
Romantics. My selection of Byron as the second poet under examination is a result of what I
perceive to be a second blind spot in Romantic criticism.

Byron as a Poet of Religious Imagination
There are a number of reasons why Byron is an ideal subject for this study of "religious"
imagination. First, since Byron is a member of the "second generation" of English Romantic
poets, his work provides an example of how the later Romantics responded to, borrowed from,
and reacted against their predecessors. More importantly, however, Byron's work provides an
excellent opportunity for the study of religious imagination simply because his work has so
rarely been discussed in this context. For example, it is significant that a work as seminal to
Romantic criticism as M.H. Abrams' Natural Supernaturalism examines all of the canonical
male English Romantics, yet leaves out Byron. Abrams explains this move, arguing that in

8

Byron's "greatest work he speaks with an ironic counter-voice and deliberately opens a satirical
perspective on the vatic stance of his Romantic contemporaries" (13). While this may be true of
Don Juan, a number of Byron's works, including his most gothic and only recently canonical
"Manfred," interact in interesting ways with a Coleridgean sort of religious imagination.
The nature of Byron's relationship to religion has been a subject of much debate from his
own lifetime until the present. Reviewers during Byron's life seemed to delight in labelling him
as an atheist and a heretic. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, critics noting the
paradoxical blend of faith and heresy in Byron's works have tended to soften these labels. For
example, Paul Barton's Lord Byron's Religion: A Journey into Despair (2003) paints Byron's
relationship to religion as that of one tormented by a hyper-Calvinistic version of Christianity
instilled in him during a dysfunctional childhood. Portraits like this show Byron not as a rejecter
of faith, but rather as one who is unable to shake a faith that haunts him. Another popular way of
looking at Byron's paradoxical relation to religion can be found in the work of critics like
Stephen Behrendt, Leslie Marchand, and Terence Hoagwood who have argued convincingly that
Byron belongs neither to a Christian nor an atheistic tradition, but that his works represent a form
of scepticism. In his important work, Byron's Dialectic: Skepticism and the Critique of Culture
(1993), Hoagwood defines the scepticism that he attributes to Byron as "an antiphilosophical
philosophy; it is the doubt that culminates in no new affirmation whatsoever" (36). This label of
"sceptic" would certainly seem to account for comments like Daniel McVeigh's: "Intellectually
Deist, emotionally Catholic, Byron understood the void that might underlie both ways of looking
at the world. Faith did not come easily to him—but neither did disbelief ("Cainne's Cyne" 286).
As a philosophical sceptic, Byron would have considered many views, and questioned each one
in turn. This approach would also seem to make sense considering the poet's own confession to

9

his friend John Cam Hobhouse in 1817, as he was revising Act 3 of "Manfred": "I do not know
what to believe—or what to disbelieve—which is the devil—to have no religion at all—all sense
& senses are against it—but all belief & much evidence is for it" (Marchand, Letters 212). I view
this "softer" approach to Byron's relation to religion as a welcome sign of things to come, and as
a promising starting point for my own discussion of Byron's religious imagination.
Byron did not leave us a Biographia in which he discussed the finer points of
imagination, and he tended to criticize and even ridicule minute doctrinal discussions like those
in which Coleridge revelled. Also, as Terence Hoagwood has so capably demonstrated in his
discussion of Byron's scepticism, Byron seldom, if ever, affirmed anything in his works. While I
admit the validity of each of these objections, I would like to add one caveat to my general
agreement with Hoagwood's analysis: while I agree that Byron's work can be classified as
belonging to the sceptical tradition, I would also assert that Byron did not rigidly, nor selfconsciously, adhere to the strict requirement of the sceptical tradition that a work should not
assert any truth. Perhaps the best example of this is that Byron's works—especially those
discussed herein—consistently demonstrate the supremacy of love above all virtues. Each of the
texts that 1 will discuss presents a generally sceptical view regarding concepts traditionally
associated with theology or ontology. That said, each of these texts also presents characters
whose central struggle is in some way related to their exile from human and divine community,
and their movement toward fragmentation rather than unity. In each case this fragmentation is
the result of the character's inability to acknowledge, or act in accordance with, the supremacy of
love. This affirmation of love is deeply theological and ontological—for many of Byron's
characters' very existence and relation to God are defined by their ability or inability to love.

10

The inability of Byron's characters to act in accordance with the supremacy of love is
intimately tied to those characters' lack of creative power (what Barth might call their impotence
to create symbols or "give meaning to the world and to his or her life" [Romanticism 4]). These
protagonists, then, are characterized by their exile from divine and human community, and their
movement toward fragmentation and disunity. All of this is the result of their inability to
"rightly" perceive the world around them—nature and supernature—through the lens of love's
supremacy. In short, they lack religious imagination.

Religious Imagination and the Beautiful Damnation
For Coleridge, the primary imagination is the greatest means by which the individual enters into
community with the divine.1 By describing the primary imagination as "a repetition in the finite
mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM," Coleridge marks the imaginative act as
an endeavour through which humans participate alongside God in his on-going act of creation.
As myriad critics have generally agreed, the primary imagination refers to common human
perception (Biographia Ch. 13), and thus includes any act "that permits the human peison to give
meaning to the world and to his or her life" (Barth, Romanticism 4). The primary imagination is,
thus, possessed by all humans. The commonness of this imagination does not, however, suggest
its inferiority to the less common secondary imagination. The secondary imagination refers to
poetic and creative acts that function prophetically to serve the primary imagination. By helping
When viewed in light of Coleridge's mature, Trinitarian theology, this concept of entering into communion with
the divine—of being unified with God—takes on even greater significance, for God, m the Trinity, is alieady a
creating community that represents unity and multeity For Coleridge, the Trinity is a self-geneiating (causa sui)
union of three peisons (hypostases) These thiee persons are distinct (Father, Son, and Spirit), yet their union is one
of mtei penetration (perichoresis) which enables them to be three and one: both unity and diversity (Hedley,
"Colendge as Theologian" 483-5) This three-fold community is characterised by love and joy, and it is the
relationship into which humanity is invited According to Coleridge, when humans create the world around them
thiough their peiccption, they join in the pie-existing community of the Trinity as it continues its ongoing creative
act

11

individuals to see things in a new light, the secondary imagination clarifies human perception
and dissolves false dichotomies, thereby resulting in a more "right" act of creation via the
primary imagination. While literary critics often focus on the poetic aspect of Coleridgean
imagination, a more important aspect is generally overlooked: while artistic creation is important
because of how it aids the primary imagination, the purpose of imagination is not to create;
rather, it is to unify, and thus to bring the individual into divine community. This was one way to
account for the unity in diversity that Coleridge observed in nature. Through the imagination, the
diversity of human individuals could be brought into unity with God by participating alongside
him in creation. At the same time, the individual could be brought into unity with the wider
creation by actually becoming a miniature creator.
By using the term "religious imagination," I simply mean to highlight the theological and
spiritual import of both primary and secondary forms of imagination. When I write of characters
who lack religious imagination, I mean that these characters need to have their primary
imaginations enlivened by the clarifying powers of the secondary imagination. While my
agreement with Barth that "imagination is of its very nature a religious act" {Romanticism 1)
makes it admittedly redundant to refer to imagination as "religious imagination," I will,
nonetheless, persist in using this term. My reason is twofold: first, I wish to distinguish my use of
imagination from traditional uses which tend to focus only on the artistic associations of the
phrase; and second, one of the primary definitions of "religion" denotes the idea of
community2—a concept central to a Coleridgean understanding of imagination which privileges

~ The OED defines religion-ironically, it too employs a redundant repetition of the word it is defining-as "the
condition of belonging to a religious order."

12

the imaginative act as a means by which the individual enters into community with God and with
the rest of creation

Overview
This thesis explores the concept of religious imagination as it appears in selected gothic or
"supernatural" narratives by Coleridge and Byron It is in these works that the veil between the
natural and the supernatural (if indeed such delineations can be made) becomes most transparent
The first chapter provides a brief introduction to the theological and sceptical climates in which
Coleridge and Byron wrote The second and third chapters discuss the idea of damnation as it
appears in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and in "Cain A Mystery " I will explore the
connection between religious imagination and damnation, and discuss the role of creative acts
and human community in the redemptive process I will argue that both texts are potential
examples of "beautiful damnation " This concept is akin to the convention offehx culpa, or
"fortunate fall " Where fehx culpa suggests that the Fall of humanity was a positive thing
because it opened up the possibility for redemption through Christ, however, the idea of the
beautiful damnation has no such optimistic view of either the Fall of humanity noi of the "falls"
of individuals This conception views any fall as tragic, and posits that it is the judgment—the
damning—itself that is "beautiful " Unlike fehx culpa, beautiful damnation suggests that
redemption is possible prior to the individual's fall—the damnation is a necessary, not a
preferred, loute to ledemption The beauty of such damnation comes in the fact that the
judgments meted out in these texts are not annihilative or eternal, but corrective The purpose of
3

The Latin term felvc culpa first appeals in St Augustine's writings in the fouith century A D and is tianslated in
the Catholic tradition as "happy fault " According to this (non-orthodox) doctrine, Adam's "fault" in taking the fruit
m Edtn is considered "happy" because it had the side effect of setting Chnst's redemption of humanity into motion

13

beautiful damnation is the eventual achievement of right perception which leads to unity of the
individual and community with God and creation. I recognize that a term like "beautiful,"
especially when employed in a discussion of Romantic texts, carries with it many aesthetic
connotations. This aesthetic suggestion is not unintended. After all, these are poetic and dramatic
presentations of damnation. By the very nature of their presentation these damnations have an
aesthetic quality and, in light of their potential to provide the damned with creative powers, I
consider these presentations to be not merely fortunate but also aesthetically beautiful. That said,
such aesthetic connections will only be hinted at in this work; further discussion will have to wait
for another project.
The final two chapters of this thesis continue to examine "damned" characters, but the
discussion here moves away from the beautiful or felicitous nature of judgement. Instead, this
section explores the crime and curse of the damned. Chapter 5 examines Coleridge's fragment
"Christabel" and Chapter 6 discusses Byron's "The Giaour" and "Manfred." Because
"Christabel" was never finished, its fragmented state leaves the reader with an ambiguity as to
the result of Christabel's curse. Though Byron's "The Giaour" and "Manfred" are complete
poems, both end ambiguously, leaving the reader to question whether the protagonists achieve
victory or are ultimately defeated. By examining the crime and curse of Christabel, the Giaour,
and Manfred, I provide interesting links to concepts established in the first part of this work. The
movement toward unity or fragmentation, the supposed boundary between nature and
supernature, and the supremacy of love, all play important roles in Chapters 5 and 6, and point
toward the functions and necessity of the religious imagination in the Romantic texts under
study.

Chapter 1
Faith in the Age of Reason

The De-supernaturalization of Religion
The eighteenth century was a profoundly troubling period for many Christians in England. While
previous generations of believers had enjoyed the relatively (and I stress this word) homogenous
rule of Christian orthodoxy,4 believers in the eighteenth century witnessed a challenge to Nicene
Christianity5 hitherto unprecedented in Protestant English history.
Not only would doubt be cast upon key doctrines and the authority of the Church, but the very
ground of theism itself would be called into question.
As rationalism and empiricism rose to prominence, many foundational Christian beliefs
were challenged because of their apparent incompatibility with the intellectual vogues of the
time. Belief in miracles was associated with "ignorant and barbarous nations" (Hume,
Understanding 10.2);6 Hobbes' materialism cast doubt upon concepts like the spirit and soul;
and Locke's attack on innate ideas led to demands for rational proof of matters hitherto accepted
on the authority of Scripture When the Church did not readily provide rationally viable answers
to these challenges, heterodox answers began to rise in their stead. By the time Coleridge started

The Church of England was not without challenge at this time (the rise of Catholicism during Mary I's reign, or of
Puritanism during Cromwell's Protectorate are just two examples of serious threats to Church of England
hegemony) However, these challenges came from within the Christian tradition and tended to focus on doctrinal or
ecclesial matteis The challenges of the eighteenth centuiy, on the other hand, drew even theism into doubt
5
The fourth-centuiy Nicene Ciecd is the most widely accepted statement of belief within Christianity It affirms
such doctrines as the divinity and resuirection of Christ, the judgment of the dead, and (implicitly) the Trinity
6
Though it is unclear what exactly Hume's personal beliefs were towards Chnstiamty, his writings weie important
to both atheists and deists Hume himself was accused of both atheism and deism, chaiges that cost him a teaching
position at Edinburgh in 1745 (Penelhum4)
7
It should be noted that even though Locke's attack on innate ideas became a foundational pait of Deism, Locke
was not a Deist himself but believed in muacles and divine revelation

15

writing seriously in the 1790s—more than a decade before Byron's poetic debut—a powerful
intellectual tradition had developed in England which held that in all matters, including matters
of faith, one's beliefs must satisfy the demands of reason and empiricism; no appeal to scriptural
authority or divine mystery could change this.
At this time any English person who wished to think seriously about his or her faith had
to negotiate a confusing gamut of religious expressions ranging from the Church of England
orthodoxy ostensibly taught in college chapels, to the heterodox expressions of many of the age's
great thinkers, to the avowed atheism which was just appearing in print for the first time during
the 1780s and 1790s. Deism is a prime example of how heterodox expressions of faith rose to
meet the challenges of the time. With its belief in a "Watchmaker" God who does not meddle in
the affairs of his creation, Deism was truly a de-supernaturalized religion. It provided its
adherents with a link to the Christian tradition without requiring "irrational" belief in such things
as miracles or divine revelation. Though Deist ideas challenged Church of England orthodoxy
early in the eighteenth century, Deism fell from favour mid-century, leaving those who were
discontented with traditional Christianity to search for spiritual solace among the other heterodox
sects that were fast appearing at this time.9
While many in England desired to remain connected to the nation's religious past and to
retain the unifying influence of their society's most vital "myth," there was also a strong impetus
to rid the faith of its "irrational" supernatural elements. The doctrine of Christ's divinity was

8

In A History ofAtheism in Britain, David Berman argues that the birth of "avowed atheism" in England began with
the publication of Answer to Dr Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever in 1782, and continued until about
1797(110)
9
The 1689 Act of Toleration facilitated this rise m the expression of heterodox belief by allowing nonconformists to
have their own teacheis and places of worship As discontent with traditional Christianity gicw thioughoul the
eighteenth centuiy, the Act made it possible for nonconformist gioups to meet and spread their beliefs This freedom
was not extended to Catholics, however, they would have to wait until the Catholic Relief Act of 1829

16

challenged by Arianism and Socinianism,

and Trinitarian theology—seen by many as a foolish

and illogical vestige of medieval superstition—was confronted with the rise of Sabellianism,''
and later by Unitarianism.

It would seem that Deism was just one head of the heterodox hydra

faced by orthodoxy—it had been removed, but in an age of growing religious toleration and
rational pursuit there would be many "heads" to replace the one that had fallen.

The Re-supernaturalization of Religion
Even as there was a major theological movement advocating the removal of supernatural
elements from Christianity, there were also reactions against this trend. Methodism had its
genesis in England in 1739, and with its large outdoor meetings, and soulful preaching and
hymnody, Methodism fostered a more emotional and experiential approach to Christianity. This
movement grew rapidly throughout the century, and in many ways it signalled a growing
discontent with the stale rationalism that was so prized by the nation's intelligentsia. Similar
grassroots trends would soon sweep up other Christian congregations, as the theological reaction
against "cold" rationalism would continue to intensify, culminating in the final decade of the
1 'K

century in widespread apocalyptic fervour and charismatic revivals.

Based on the fourth-century teachings of Anus, Ananism held that, while Jesus existed before creation as the
divine Logos, he did not have a personal existence until he was created by God. Socinianism held a similar
Christology, but developed a unique identity in the sixteenth century with its insistence on only accepting those
doctnnes that could be lationally conceived Both sects weie also non-Tiinitanan
11
Sabellianism oiigmated in the third centuiy with Sabelhus, who taught that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit aie
not three distinct peisons, but lather are three diffeient facets, or modes, of the same peison
Eighteenth-centui y Unitarianism highly privileged human reason Perhaps most famously taught by Joseph
Priestley—and adhcied to for a time by Coleridge—Unitananism denied the divinity of Christ, the existence of
miracles, the mspuation of the Bible, and the atonement and resurrection
A great heightening of expectation of apocalypse occurred in England near the end of the century Piophets
wandered the streets of London, congiegations reported miraculous healings and members speaking in tongues, and
many believed that Chust's return was imminent This trend, and its htciary articulations, has been discussed in a

17

This sudden revival of interest in the supernatural was not only confined to Christian
communities. Further evidence of revived spiritual interest at this time can be found in the
dramatic rise of gothic popular fiction. Beginning as early as the 1760s, authors like Horace
Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis thrilled their readership with tales that suggested the
possibility (as in Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho) and even the actuality (as in Lewis' The
Monk) of supernatural happenings breaking into the mundane physical world. A glut of gothic
tales followed with images of charnel houses and the walking dead soon becoming common fare
in popular literature. In a century when science had explained away and disenchanted so many of
the mysteries of life, gothic fiction provided a world that was still filled with enchantment,
mystery, and even horror.
These trends, both within the Christian community and in popular literature, are just two
examples of the fissures that were forming in the relatively hegemonic, de-supernaturalized
rationalism of the eighteenth century. At the turn of the century these fissures continued to grow.
When the French Revolution failed to bring about the rational utopia hoped for by many
rationalists, or the millennial kingdom anticipated by many "supernaturalists," H both extremes
found their paradigms crumbling. Many individuals found both rationalism and supernaturalism
unable to offer the answers necessary to cope with the difficulties of the new century.
Rationalism had proven unable to restrain the senseless violence of the Revolution. Likewise,
supernatural belief and millennial fervour seemed to have led to an apocalypse (the Revolution)

number of recent works including Morton Paley's Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (1999),
and Tim Fulford's edited collection Romanticism and Millenarianism (2002).
I use this term as a broad category for those who reacted against rationalism and chose to privilege religious
experience above reason.

18

without millennium.15 For many, a new theological and philosophical outlook was needed to
make sense of recent events. Many of Byron's works pivot on these issues as his heroes grapple
with their inability to reconcile themselves to this new world. These issues were also an
important part of what prompted William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge to publish
their era-marking poetry collection, Lyrical Ballads (1798).

"Mariner" and "Cain": What Happens When Ideals Fail
In his famous passage from the beginning of Chapter 14 in the Biographia, Coleridge describes
the goals he and Wordsworth set for themselves in writing Lyrical Ballads:
it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters
supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human
interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination
that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr.
Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm
of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by
awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the
loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for
which in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet
see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand. {Biographia Ch.
14)

This trend of apocalypse leading to millennium is a common Christian trope—often lefened to as "premillenniahsm"—that has surfaced at vanous times in Chnstian history. Again, for moie on this trope and its
connection with the Romantic period, see Moiton Paley's Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry
(1999), and Tim Fulford's edited collection Romanticism and Millenariamsm (2002)

19

In many ways, at least according to Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads was an experiment in obscuring
the boundary between the natural and the supernatural. While the eighteenth-century endeavours
of the rationalists, on the one hand, and the supernaturalists on the other (whether millenarians,
Methodists, gothic writers, etc.), served to widen the chasm between the natural and the
supernatural by emphasizing how different the two were, Lyrical Ballads did just the opposite.
Rather than emphasize the difference between the two, it enchanted the natural and made the
supernatural feel common. These poems eroded the boundaries between the natural and the
supernatural, allowing one to bleed into the other.
Nonetheless, the very fact that Coleridge refers to his own poems as depicting the
"supernatural, or at least romantic," and to Wordsworth's as "every day," shows that, while the
boundary between natural and supernatural might have been portrayed as more fluid in Lyrical
Ballads, there still remained a boundary. In many ways the goal of Wordsworth's poems stressed
an ideal: to see "the inexhaustible treasures . . . the loveliness and the wonders of the world
before us" (Ch. 14); they privileged a perception of the natural world and mundane life as
endowed with a sense of the divine. Wordsworth's poems portray what he and Coleridge saw
as an ideal relation of the subject to the divine and to the biological world. There is no battle
between faith and reason here, just as there is no clear demarcation between the natural and
supernatural. It is when these dichotomies (faith/reason, natural/supernatural) are reinforced, and
one side is privileged to the neglect of the other, that problems occur. This is precisely the reason
I have chosen to investigate the poems of Coleridge and Byron, and not of Wordsworth.
16

One need only to think of the countless discussions of pantheism in Wordsworth's poems to prove that there is a
deeply religious (or supernatural) clement to them Not only do these poems endow the natural world with
supernatuial elements but Coleridge himself noted that the "young men of strong ability and meditative minds" who
admired Wordsworth's poems, did so with an admuation that was "distinguished by its intensity, I might almost say,
by its religions fervour" {Biographia Ch 14)

20

Coleridge's and Byron's works show what happens when the ideal fails. Their poems,
particularly Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and Byron's "Cain: A Mystery,"
portray individuals and incidents where false dichotomies prevail. Both poems' protagonists
suffer from overly rational worldviews, and fail to properly respect the supernatural, while other
characters in the texts are so heavily dominated by faith that they fail to think rationally at all.
These texts also portray worlds in which the natural/supernatural boundaries are exaggerated. In
Coleridge's poem, the Mariner clearly moves from the natural world of Section I, into a
nightmare realm of the supernatural, and then back into the "real world" again at the poem's
conclusion. In Byron's play, Cain undergoes a similar journey from "natural" Earth, to the gates
of Hades, and then back to Earth once more. Just as these texts seem to exaggerate these
boundaries, however, they also subvert them. A closer look at both texts will beg the question,
just what constitutes the distinction between the natural and the supernatural after all?
Both "Mariner" and "Cain" show that the individual subject cannot be saved by
rationalism or supernaturalism. My investigation of these two poems demonstrates that what is
necessary to attain an ideal perception of the whole world (both natural and supernatural), and to
avoid the pitfalls of rationalist and supernaturalist extremes, is religious imagination. This faculty
enables one to perceive the interpenetrating1 nature of apparently dichotomous terms (like
natural/supernatural and faith/reason), and also brings the individual into community with nature,
with humans, and with the Godhead.
The eponymous heroes of "Mariner" and "Cain" both lack religious imagination, and the
consequence of this deficiency is the removal of the individual from community (with the divine,
17

This woid was actually coined by Coleridge (OED) and was used in the Biographia to describe the dissolution of
polanties that leads to unity—lnlerpcnetration desenbes the meeting point "of counteracting powcis partaking of
both" (Biographia Ch 13)

21

with humans, and with the biological world) While the damnations of the Mariner and of Cain
occur for similar reasons, it is ultimately the differences between their punishments that make
these texts so interesting to compare While the damning in "Mariner" functions as a chastening
that eventually leads to the protagonist's attainment of religious imagination and thus his
redemption, the destination of Cain's journey is less conclusive At the end of Byron's text, Cain
finds himself damned and exiled, forced out of human and divine community While the end
result of Cain's judgment could be salvific, the play's conclusion gives no explicit reason to hope
this is true "Mariner" and "Cain," then, are indicative of the different outlooks of Coleridge and
Byron on matters of faith
Both "Manner" and "Cain" ask the same fundamental questions about faith and reason,
and both postulate similar views about the inadequacies of privileging one above the other Both
portray isolation and fragmentation as a form of personal hell, and both protagonists are
sentenced to an exile that brings them through this hell In addition to these similarities, both
texts also feature a conspicuous absence of the Christian God—an absence that deepens the sense
of ambiguity and uncertainty in each text If the similarities between these texts seem sulking,
this is entirely justified, for Coleridge himself claimed to have begun writing "Mannei" in the
wake of a failed attempt to write a narrative titled The Wanderings of Cain (Coleridge,
Wanderings 218) 18
Coleridge's "Mariner" functions, in part, as a critique of rationalist and supernaturahst
extiemes, to some extent, as the poet's earnest search for answers to the difficulties faced by

18

In his preface to the fragment The Wanderings ofCam, Coleudge tells of a scheme in which he and an unnamed
friend were to write a three book work about the wandenngs of Cain after he is exiled from his family The existing
fragment is Coleridge's work on the second of these thiee books He writes that as "I hastened to him [the fnend]
with my manuscnpt" he was overcome "with the sense of the exceeding iidiculousness of the whole scheme—which
broke up in a laugh and the Ancient Manner was written instead' (218)

22

people of faith in his age; and, additionally—especially in its 1834 version—as a powerful
assertion of the conviction that there is an answer, and that the religious imagination is the
faculty by which that answer can be found.' It is for this reason that I will use the 1834 version
of the poem. Although there has been long-standing debate about whether the original or later
versions are superior, I am of the school that sees the poem's many stages of development as
evolutionary. In its earliest version, I hold that "Mariner" embodied a critique of rationalism and
supernaturalism, and a chronicle of the poet's journey to answer the age's questions regarding
those issues. While this version depicted some of Coleridge's answers to these questions, these
answers were not yet confirmed in the author's mind and thus, as Coleridge's conviction grew,
he necessarily altered the poem to emphasize those points which were already there, but which
could now be asserted with greater confidence.20
In contrast, the conclusion of "Cain" is characterized by the theological scepticism of its
author. In "Cain" Byron grapples with many of the same issues as Coleridge, but he offers no
sincere conviction, except, perhaps, the conviction that certainty is impossible. Nonetheless,
while Byron is noncommittal about the existence of God and the ultimate outcome of Cain's
judgment (that is, whether it is a salvific, beautiful damnation, or merely a damning punishment),

19

In many ways, the development of religious imagination was the purpose behind Coleridge's mature writing In
John M'Vickar's "Preliminary Essay" to Aids, he wntes that what "[Coleridge] ever and chiefly aimed at, [was]
namely, that the heart and reason, the one awakened, and the other enlightened, should become a united temple of
praise and love [. .]"(xvi)
20
On this point I respectfully disagree with critics like William Empson who calls "Manner" "a splendid poem
which was mangled by its author for leasons of conscience" (Selected Poems 23), David Pine who wntes that the
added "marginalia are by their very nature pei verting," that "they he," and even make "nonsense of the poem at its
very core" (214-5), and James B Twitchell who considered at least one aspect of the later version to be "partially
sabotaged by a hoodwinked Colendge" (21) While these scholars offer valid reasons foi preferring the earhei
version, I do not believe it is fan to reject the later versions as the products of a "hoodwinked" or confused
Coleridge. After all, as to the theological themes on which "Marinei" is so heavily focused, Coleridge only became
more and moie certain—not more confused—as time went on It is this growing certainty with which I am
concerned

23

I argue that he does assert a sense of certainty about the primary importance of human
community and the role of love in facilitating this community. I demonstrate that love is central
to a Byronic view of religious imagination, and that it seems to be the one thing Byron was
willing to affirm with some certainty.
In the following two chapters I examine the tension between faith and reason, and
explore the boundaries of the natural and the supernatural as portrayed in "Mariner" and "Cain;"
I discuss the absence, pursuit, and attainment of religious imagination in each text; and, finally, I
investigate the differences in the damnation that occurs in each work. Despite the different
conclusions of these works, both protagonists have the potential to be viewed as being
beautifully damned. In many ways, it is these different conceptions of what makes a damning
beautiful that characterize the works of Coleridge and Byron, and it is also these differences that
have allowed these texts to endure, to touch the affections, and to excite the imaginations, of
diverse readers in diverse times.

Chapter 2
Coleridge's Mariner

There are indeed mysteries, in evidence of which no reasons can be brought. But it has
been my endeavour to show, that the true solution of this problem is, that these mysteries
are reason, reason in its highest form of self affirmation. (Coleridge, Aids to Reflection
xlvi)

Finally, Good Sense is the Body of poetic genius, Fancy its Drapery, Motion its Life, and
Imagination the Soul that is everywhere, and in each; andforms all into one graceful and
intelligent whole. (Coleridge, Biographia Literaria Chapter 14)

Three Stages toward the Attainment of Religious Imagination
"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is an old sailor's tale of a fateful voyage when his ship is
blown off course and becomes trapped amidst Antarctic ice drifts. An albatross appears to the
crew and, upon their hearty greeting of the bird, the ship is freed from the ice. Despite this good
fortune, the Mariner shoots the albatross and a series of apparently supernatural events unfolds as
the crew dies, and the Mariner is kept alive until his eventual redemption, after which his ship
sails miraculously back to home port. Though redeemed, the Mariner nonetheless has an
unnaturally long life bestowed upon him, and is occasionally seized by an uncontrollable need to
tell his tale to passersby. The poem is one such telling of his tale.
In his classic 1946 essay, Robert Penn Warren asserted that "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner" is "a poem of pure imagination" (21). Despite this essay's heavy focus on the

25

imagination, however, it marked a deviation from previous scholarship—like that typified by
John Livingston Lowes—which tended to see "Mariner" as being completely unmoored from
reality ("Pure Imagination" 391). Warren posited that the poem is primarily concerned with two
themes: "The theme of the 'One Life,' of sacramental vision, [which] is essentially religious,"
and "the theme of imagination [which] is essentially aesthetic" (41). This chapter works from the
premise that both of these themes—sacramental vision and the imagination—are, indeed central
to "Mariner," but that, contra Warren, they should not be divided into separate religious and
aesthetic categories. It is precisely this sort of dichotomization that Coleridge is working against
in the poem. In the albatross, the aesthetic and the religious, the natural and the supernatural,
come together, and it is the Mariner's inability to see this interpenetration of categories that starts
him along his terrible journey. One of the primary purposes of the religious imagination is to
enable a "true" perception, and in "Mariner" this perception is characterized by a sacramental
vision that sees the boundary between the natural and the supernatural as fluid and not fixed.
Since both sacramental vision and religious imagination are primarily concerned with perception,
they are by definition aesthetic as well as religious faculties.
This search for true perception seems to have been one of the great themes of Coleridge's
life. It is what led him, as a youth at Cambridge, to reject the Anglicanism of his childhood for a
more rational Unitarianism,

and it is also what led him back to Christianity when the ultra-

There tends to be a polarization among scholars with regard to this pcnod in Coleridge's life While some unduly
minimize this Unitarian penod by poitiaying it as a bnef "phase" that Coleridge soon grew out of, others
overemphasize this period, to the occlusion of Coleridge's later (and much more voluminous) Christian thought
While this penod of a few years is relatively short when compaied with his later orthodox Christian period, he
nonetheless held his Unitarian faith with immense conviction (he even came within a hairsbreadth of taking a
ministenal position with a Unitarian congiegation) For these leasons, I prefer to see his time of Unitanan
confession as an essential step in the development of his mind For example, it was at this time that Colendge
became convinced of the importance of leason, even as he gicw aware of the limits of reason alone

26

rational idealism of the Unitarian creed failed him. It was in the midst of this journey—while
still ostensibly a Unitarian, but struggling with doubts about that creed—that Coleridge penned
"Mariner." It is not surprising, then, that Coleridge should have chosen "Mariner"—a poem in
which the natural and supernatural so dramatically collide—to explore the relation of faith and
reason, and the search for true perception.
While the move toward de-supernaturalization was a strong force in eighteenth-century
theology, Coleridge's work argued for a new direction. Much like his contemporary, German
theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834),23 Coleridge's theological expressions, even as
early as 1798, portray both a commitment to Enlightenment reason as well as a "Romantic"
tendency to find in religion something greater than, and unexplainable by, reason. The mature
Coleridge believed that in matters of religion, intellectual difficulties in the intelligibility "of a
doctrine need not prevent the acceptance of its truth, provided it has a basis in the practical
reason, or in spiritual experience" (Wilde 161; italics mine). "Mariner" is in many ways a
working out of this belief. The Mariner endures all manner of spiritual experience along his
journey toward the attainment of religious imagination, and it is the three stages of this journey
that I will discuss herein.
The first stage depicts a sort of "fall" of humanity. It introduces the sacramental quality
of nature and shows how both the Mariner and his fellow sailors are unable to properly perceive
the world around them. The Mariner is blinded to the supernatural reality at work in the
biological world, and his fellow sailors are conversely blinded by their superstition and lack of
22

It was the Unitarian Colendge who wrote, just months before publishing "Mariner," that "though all my doubts
aie done away, though Christianity is my passion, it is too much my intellectual passion, and therefoic will do me
but little good in the hour of temptation and calamity" {Letters 407)
Schleiermacher is often called the "father of libeial Chustianity" and is, peihaps, best known for his "Romantic"
theology, which privileged human emotion and imagination

27

reason. The second stage depicts the Mariner's return journey from the South Pole, and the
"deep" religious experience that characterizes that trip. This experience serves as a sort of "dark
night of the soul" which facilitates the Mariner's eventual attainment of religious imagination.
The final stage chronicles the Mariner's return to the European setting where the story began.
Here the Mariner—newly endowed with religious imagination—exhibits sacramental vision, as
he enjoys deeper communion with God, with humans, and with nature, and encourages others to
enjoy the same experience.

The First Stage: Rationalism and Supernaturalism as Crimes against Imagination
Before attending to the text there is one further note that should be made. By insisting upon the
importance of sacramental vision in "Mariner," I do not mean to imply that the text can be read
as a sacramental allegory in which each element of the poem corresponds to some theological
meaning. While there are sacramental aspects to the poem, there are also radically illogical
elements that defy allegory. I am thus very much in agreement with James Boulger when he
writes that
The world of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is neither a clear presentation of a
sacramental universe, nor a merely meaningless nightmare vision, but is rather an original
parable in epic structure of the uneasy religious scepticism and faith that has been with us
since Newton and Kant. (Boulger 20)
One element of the poem that does have sacramental meaning is the albatross. I agree with
Warren that the Mariner's shooting of the albatross is "a crime against imagination" (33), and I
also concur with Newton Stallknecht's assertion that this shooting "musf be interpreted "as the
symbol of reason's conquest over feeling" (564)—though I would perhaps go even further and

28

call it a conquest of religious feeling. Although the albatross appears to be merely a bird, it is
attributed numerous spiritual qualities by both the sailors and, in later editions, by Coleridge's
own marginal gloss. The Mariner is unable to accept this interpenetration of the natural and the
supernatural. His purely rational view of the cosmos blinds him to the fullness of nature, and he
only sees things as they appear; he is unable to reflect on the ding an sich.24 Rather than yield to
a faculty he cannot understand (like feeling, or imagination25), the Mariner chooses to kill what
he cannot understand; he is like the eighteenth-century rationalists who sought to excise those
aspects of religion that they could not rationally comprehend. It is for this rejection of
supernatural reality that he is damned.
To better understand the nature of the blindnesses that precipitate the respective "falls" of
the Mariner and his fellow sailors, some explanation and substantiation of my claims about the
sacramental qualities of nature are necessary. The word "sacrament" actually means "mystery"
and, in its broadest sense, refers to the sign of something sacred (Kennedy). In the case of the
sacraments of the Church, the physical emblems not only symbolize a supernatural reality, but
are to some degree inhabited by that reality. This is best exemplified in the doctrine of
transubstantiation where the bread of the Eucharist is believed actually to become the body of

Kant's concept of the ding an sich is helpful in understanding Coleridge's portrayal of the supernatuial and
natural as co-habitmg in phenomenal objects (like the albatross) Kant called all objects which we can know via our
senses phenomena, but argued that human speculative reason can never penetrate to see the thing-in-itself (das ding
an sich) Kant believed in a reality beyond phenomena, but he argued that humans could not intellectually intuit
such things (Reason 347-50) Though Coleridge would not really come into contact with Kantian thought until his
visit to Germany in 1798, "Manner" evinces an early philosophical leaning toward something quite similar to Kant's
ding an sich
While Coleridge's and Kant's conceptions of the ding an sich are similar, "Mariner" evinces an important
difference fiom Kant's concept (made explicit in his moie mature writings) Where Kant stressed the unknowability
of things-in-themselves, Coleridge argued that the ding an sich could indeed be intuited, but that this must be done
via some faculty othci than the undeistanding (Valhns 107, Wilson 51, Wcndhng 138)

29

Christ.

In "Mariner," Coleridge often invokes elements of nature (like the sun, wind, ice, and

albatross) as signs that point to, and are inhabited by, the supernatural. In some cases this
supernatural could be God himself, while in other cases the signs seem to point more clearly to a
sort of enlivening spirit, much like the "one life," described in "The Eolian Harp." 27
This sacramental portrayal of nature first appears in the opening lines of the Mariner's
tale to the Wedding-Guest. Here the sun and storm-blast are personified with the pronoun "he"
(26, 41). 28 The storm is also described as "tyrannous and strong," as striking with "o'ertaking
wings," and as "chasing" the sailors' ship (42-4). Although this personification could simply be
employed for dramatic effect, these passages should be considered more closely, especially in
light of the pantheistic (or panentheistic) elements present later in the poem. If the Polar Spirit is
responsible for "ma[king] the ship to go" (380) later in the poem, it does not seem unlikely that
there might be a spiritual element also to the storm-blast "who chased [the ship] south along"
(42). Whatever the case, it should be noted that nature is here portrayed as animate and as
exercising agency over the ship. This is not a passive nature (i.e., natura naturata) that the
sailors set out to conquer; rather, the sun seems to choose when he will grace the sailors with his
light, and the personified wind chases the ship at his pleasure, not the sailors'. When one

It is difficult to say with certainty the degree to which the natural and supematmal are unified in "Manner's"
sacramental vision The more extreme view of the sacraments (exemplified in the Catholic doctrine of
transubstantiation) in which the physical emblem and supei natural leahty become one could be justified in light of
the poem's pre-Reformation setting At the same time, one could object that Coleridge would not have endorsed
such a view in light of Article XXVIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles which declares that "Tiansubstantiation . cannot
be proved by Holy Writ, but is repugnant to the plain words of Scnpture " Nonetheless, the Church of England
Catechism states that "The Body and Blood of Christ
are venly and indeed taken and received by the faithful in
the Lord's Suppei" (Book oj Common Prayer 167) It should be noted that my concern here is not with the degiee to
which the supcmatuial is present in the elements of "Manner", lather, it is that the supernatural is indeed present
In "The Eolian Haip" this "one life" is described as that power which "meets all motion and becomes its soul"
(26-7), it is that which "sweeps" over "all of animated natuie
At once the Soul of each, and God of All" (44-8)
28
Unless olheiwisc indicated, all line numbeis heic apply to the 1834 edition of the text

30

considers the mature Coleridge's challenge to traditional categories of living and non-living,
this reading of these early lines becomes even more convincing. Much like the Mariner,
however, the reader can only recognize this sacramental rendering of nature in retrospect—the
first-time reader, not attuned to the interpenetration of natural and supernatural elements which
will later become so evident, is likely to miss these subtle hints of the supernatural already
peeking through the text. The sun and the storm, then, are functioning at least as sacraments in
the broad sense (i.e., as signs of something sacred [Kennedy]).
As the sailors journey further away from the city (a centre of commerce and logic, built
with the processed materials that even Coleridge would agree are non-living30), the sacramental
quality of the world around them becomes more pronounced. In the stanzas immediately
preceding the arrival of the albatross, the sailors enter a land of ice and snow where there are no
other living creatures. Emerald-green ice-drifts as tall as the ship's mast pass them by and soon
the crew find themselves trapped amidst the ice:
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound. (59-62)
There is a distinctly sublime quality about this ice. It is terrifying in that its immense size and
power are able to crush the ship, and yet it does not. The ice surrounds the ship, but does not
destroy it. Here the ice signifies the boundary that the Mariner and his fellow sailors believe
exists between them (as inhabitants of the natural world) and the infinite or the supernatural.
29

In his Theory of Life Coleridge argues, for example, that gold (in its natural form) and frost on a windowpane are
as alive as humans (47).
While Coleridge insists in Theory of Life, that metals like gold express life, he adds that a processed ingot of gold
does not, for "its form is accidental and ab extra" (47).

31

From within the confines of their ship—where the laws of reason have not yet been violated—
the ice would seem almost infinite, for individual drifts dwarf the small ship, and the howling,
roaring sound would have drowned out the sailors' loudest shouts. In effect, their existence is all
but annihilated, for a close passerby would neither see nor hear them over the ice. In the ice drifts
the sailors find themselves confronted by a sacrament of the infinite. Yet this reality only
surrounds them at this point, it does not yet penetrate their existence (though the sailors will
soon enough experience eternity for themselves).
The fact that there is a sacramental quality about this portrayal of ice can be further
supported by noting that "Mariner" is not the only work of Coleridge's in which he depicts the
sublimity of ice in a sacramental manner. During the winter after the poem's publication
Coleridge observed a scene of ice skaters in Germany. His description was published years later
in The Friend under the title "Christmas out of Doors," and his sublime portrayal of sunlight and
the visual and aural qualities of ice is the subject of an essay by Tim Fulford. In this essay
Fulford describes Coleridge's portrayal of nature as representing "the presence of an apparently
miraculous and spiritual force operating within nature" (819), and he explores Coleridge's
descriptions as Christological symbols. Although the description of the ice drifts in "Mariner" is
not as explicitly religious as the description in "Christmas out of Doors," both seem to flow from
the same Coleridgean belief that nature—especially sublime nature—often serves as the
supernatural's point of penetration in the phenomenal world.
In "Mariner," when the ship becomes surrounded by ice, the sailors seem to be at the
threshold of eternity, with annihilation just beyond the safety of their ship. It is at this point that
the albatross appears, and all versions of the poem depict the sailors as hailing it "In God's
name" as if "it had been a Christian soul" (65-6). The sailors feed the bird, and it proceeds to fly

32

"round and round" (perhaps suggesting a magical circle like that in "Kubla Khan"). It is at this
point that "The ice did split with a thunder-fit" and the helmsman steers them through the newly
made passage (69-70), much like Moses leading Israel through the parted Red Sea.
Again Coleridge's description of the ice brings "Christmas out of Doors" to mind. Here
Coleridge describes the separation of mist upon the ice in a manner designed to evoke Exodus
14:29 ("But the children of Israel walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea; and the waters
were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left"). In "Mariner," the splitting of the
ice to make passage for the sailors seems similarly designed to mirror Israel's passage through
the Red Sea. Could it be that the albatross is a sort of gatekeeper who, adequately greeted by the
sailors, performs his magical rite, and opens up a gateway through the ice? Or, phrased less
mystically, could it be that the albatross is a symbol for religious feeling, and those who are able
to intuit the supernatural qualities of the bird—those who identify it as a saviour, or "Christian
soul"—are also able to see the passage out of the physical world in which they are trapped and
into the supernatural reality represented by the ice? It may be that the ice was only ever an
illusory boundary, and that to gaze on it with "right" perception was to see that that the boundary
was less solid than it appeared. Whatever the case, it is the albatross who enables the sailors to
see this reality (after all, it is the "believing" helmsman who sees the passage, not the unseeing
Mariner).
The albatross is the clearest example of nature as sacrament in the text—while a physical
creature, it is clearly depicted as having sacred qualities. The marginal gloss Coleridge added to
the editions from 1817 on supports this view, reading that "the Albatross proveth a bird of good

31

Fulford draws this comparison in his essay, and even piesents evidence from Coleridge's letters, showing that this
Mosaic allusion was the author's intention in wiiting this passage in "Chustmas out of Doois" (820)

33

omen" (gloss 169), suggesting that the bird portends something greater than itself. Furthermore,
all versions of the poem credit the bird with a power that "made the breeze to blow" (94). The
spiritual nature of the bird is further heightened by the fact that it repeatedly returns, no matter
the weather, for food and play as well as to perch "for vespers nine" (71-6)—that is, to join the
sailors for evening prayer.32 In these early lines, then, the albatross is clearly accepted by the
sailors as a spiritual figure. He is hailed as a Christian soul, he is connected in some way with the
opening of the ice-passage and the blowing of the wind, he joins the sailors for evening prayers,
and—in a move that is perhaps more pagan, or superstitious, than Christian—he is even viewed
as a good omen.33
The sailors' ability to recognise spiritual qualities in the albatross demonstrates their
sense of religious feeling. They "partake" of the sacrament of the albatross as they invite it into
their community, and as they pray alongside and take bread with it (67, 73). Unfortunately for
the sailors, this sensitivity to religious experience is not tempered by reason. Their spiritual
experience is defined by superstition. Where they see the albatross as a good omen early on (93Wilham Empson has aigued that this idea of the albalioss joining the sailois foi evening piayer is an invention of
the oldei Coleridge, which was not piesent in the original He cites the etymology of "vespers," noting that the woid
was not used to refer to prayers until post-Reformation (and thus after the events of the poem's narrative) ("Answer
to Warren" 158-9) He aigues against the attachment of any spnitual significance to the albatross in the original
version of the poem (and even against any attempt at all to make the poem's "accidents" appear as "punishments
calculated by God" [159]) While his points aie valid, it should be noted that the Manner and Wedding-Guest
attribute significance to the bird When the Wedding-Guest notices a change in the Mariner's countenance and asks
"Why look'st thou so1?" the Manner replies "With my cioss-bow / 1 shot the Albatioss" (81-2) That the Marinei
considers this an explanation for his change of mood and that the Wedding-Guest accepts it with no further
comment are noteworthy If there was no significance to the albatross' murder this brief exchange would be both
pointless, and an antichmactic ending to Part I
33

While many of Coleridge's revisions serve to "Christianize" the poem, it is significant that the superstitious
phiase "good omen" was added later This addition of a superstitious phrase in describing the albatioss seems to
suggest that the pagan conceptions of the sailors aie as important as the Christian ones As I have already suggested,
the bird represents religious imagination, whether Christian or not, and it is the sailors' intuition of the supernatural
that is important here, not their strict adherence to Christian doctrine—which would avoid talk of "omens " Their
eventual "fall" is not a result of then holding to pagan convictions, it is the result of their fickle, iiiational piactice of
those beliefs that damns them

34

6), they later decide that it was right for the Mariner to kill it (99-102), and then later change
their mind once more, condemning the Mariner's act (139-42). Their faith is dictated by
circumstance; their convictions are swayed by every breeze of fancy. For Coleridge, true faith is
characterized by both feeling and reason. Feeling alone can result in superstition, while reason
alone cannot account for the mysteries "in evidence of which no reasons can be brought"
(Coleridge, Aids xlvi).
If the sailors represent the flaw of supernaturalists, then the Mariner clearly enacts the
fault of the rationalist. After all, there is no rational reason to see anything wrong with the
Mariner's murder of the albatross (according to Cartesian mechanism it could not think or feel).
To believe otherwise would be (for the sceptic) to permit the existence of the miraculous, or (for
the orthodox) to regress into a sort of medieval superstition. To the reader, however, it is
abundantly clear that the Mariner's action is motivated, at least in part, by a spiritual bankruptcy
that causes him to transgress the poem's clearly stated moral that it is imperative to love "All
things both great and small." 34 His inhumane act toward the albatross does not de-humanise him;
it reveals that, as a purely rational being, he is already somehow less than human.
The Mariner's murder of the albatross evinces his a-spiritual view of the natural world.
Within the framework of rational understanding, the murder of the bird—though "inhospitable"
as the gloss asserts (170)—does not warrant the judgment that results from it. In fact, for the
Mariner's punishment to make any sense at all it must be accepted that the Mariner has
transgressed a law that is beyond reason—a law he is unaware of because of his purely rational
understanding of the bird, and of the cosmos.

Coleridge, "Mariner," 615.

35

As Part II begins, the Mariner admits that "I had done a hellish thing / And it would work
'em [the sailors] woe" (91-2). This soon proves true as the wind stops and the sailors find
themselves stranded in the Pacific. It is at this point that the consequence of the Mariner's aspiritual perception manifests itself and "the albatross begins to be avenged" (gloss 171). At this
point the Mariner's eyes are slowly opened to the noumenal 35 world; however, it will take more
than an acknowledgement of the reality of the supernatural to expiate his sins. To accept the
supernatural as a realm that exists parallel to the phenomenal, but which cannot normally be
accessed by humans, would be to perpetuate the problematic dichotomy expressed by the
eighteenth-century extremes of rationalism and supernaturalism. Rather than accept an
ambiguous, unknowable noumenon, the Mariner must learn to see what Coleridge called "Life,"
that is, the "one universal soul, [that] . . . all organized bodies have in common, each after its
own kind" (Aids 4). In other words, he must do what Kant called impossible: he must learn to
intuit the noumenon; he must know the ding an sich (Kant 352).
After the albatross is killed, the sailors find themselves adrift in a hostile and apparently
supernatural space. The supernatural is here evinced by strange weather conditions, the sight of a
bloody sun, a sea turned slimy, and the presence of "death-fires" dancing at night (106-28).
Some sailors even commune with spirits in their sleep (131-2). Here it is tempting to divide the
Mariner's journey into two opposite parts: one in which logic prevails, and the second in which
the supernatural is dominant. However, if the journey could, indeed, fit into such categories it
would support the natural/supernatural opposition that Coleridge saw as problematic. In

5

Kant referred to those aspects of reality which cannot be intellectually intuited as noumena. While this term is
often used synonymously with ding an sich, they are not exactly the same. In my usage I refei to dmg as sich as
specific things as they leally aie (but cannot be pciceived), and noumena as a geneial category foi the world beyond
the leach of empirical observation

36

actuality, even during the apparently logical first portion of the journey, the supernatural is
always present through the sacraments of nature Likewise, while the second half of the journey
seems to be dominated by supernatural experience, virtually every aspect of it can be explained
rationally

Even those aspects which seem to have no rational explanation—like the death-ship

and the reanimated corpses of the sailors—could be explained away as hallucinations in the
Mariner's mind What truly matters, however, is that the Mariner believes himself to be
experiencing the supernatural And who is to say that he is not1? This is the crux of the poem
Like the eighteenth-century rationalists and supernaturahsts, some critics have been tempted to
find a way to rationalize each element of the poem or, on the other hand, to insist that it is
nothing but a nightmare dream-vision with no rational meaning at all I believe that the poem
defies both of these readings The point is not to try to de-supernaturalize each "miracle" in the
poem, it is, rather, to understand that the dichotomy is faulty Of course the sun, wind, ice, and
albatross are phenomenal objects, but for Coleridge, they are also saciamental, and therefore
inhabited by the sacred Even if the Mariner's expenences with Death, the Polai Spirit, and the
reanimated coipses are explained away as hallucinations (he is, after all, malnourished, dying of
thirst, and under great stress), it does not make them any less sacramental—for peihaps it is only
through hallucination that the Mariner's rational mind is able to let down its guard and see the
world as it really is as a place of fluid mterpenetration between the natural and supernatural
Whatever the case, it is at this point in the text that both the Mariner and sailors are called
to account for then sins There are numeious echoes of the biblical fall from Eden here Like
Adam in the Garden, following Eve in her sin and then blaming her for his act, the sailors blame

3

John Livingstone Lowes' The Road to Xanadu A Study in the Ways oj Imagination (New York Houghton Mifflin
Co , 1927), exploics dozens of examples of appaicnlly supernatuial events in "Mannei" that wcic, in fact, mspned
by Colendgc's leading of thcjoumals of various sailors

37

the Mariner for their sin. They hang the albatross around his neck in an act that correctly
censures his shooting of the albatross, yet which fails to account for their own complicity in the
act. On the other hand, the Mariner's sin bears some resemblances to Cain's (remember that
"Mariner" was written in the wake of a failed attempt to write "The Wanderings of Cain"). He
commits the murder of a "Christian soul" (65) and is consequently exiled from his community
and from God. The resemblance of the Mariner's and his crew's sins to the biblical first sin and
first murder position these men as everymen figures. Here Coleridge suggests that the sin
plaguing humanity, that which causes it to repeat the original sin which separates it from God, is
to err to one or the other extreme regarding religious imagination, to privilege feeling at the cost
of all reason, or to elevate reason to the negation of feeling.

The Second Stage: The Return Journey as Dark Night of the Soul
During the return portion of the journey, the Mariner's experience appears to become more and
more supernatural. Reason cannot easily account for the events that follow, and numerous
commentators have remarked on the "dream-like" logic that seems to govern this portion of the
Mariner's journey. He meets both Death and Life-in-Death in person (188-93), observes as the
souls "fly" from the bodies of his crewmates (220), overhears the conversation of the spirits who
guide his ship (396-7), and is mysteriously sustained many days past when the other mortals
perish. The one man on the ship who dares to question the existence of the miraculous now
appears to be adrift on a miracle-filled sea. Whether these "miracles" are physical realities,
hallucinations, or the products of a dream, is not the point. What does matter here is that the

Later in Coleridge's career, this theme of understanding enlivened by imagination would become the dominant
theme of his theological writings, standing as the overarching purpose, for example, of Aids to Reflection.

38

Manner believes these experiences to be real, and that the dichotomy of natural and supernatural
becomes shrouded in ambiguity
It should be noted that both the sailors and the Mariner are unprepared for the "deep"
religious experience that occurs during the return trip The sailors' lack of preparation ends in
their annihilation The Mariner is also unprepared for this experience and yet, for some reason,
he is sustained through it The ensuing experience becomes for him a sort of "dark night of the
soul " 38 While unable to save him, the miracles help to precipitate a crisis through which, by the
end of the poem, he attains a sort of "union of love with God" (St John 1)
Why the Mariner is sustained while the other sailors perish is unclear This could be
evidence of Coleridge's preference for reason over supernaturahsm, or, on the other hand, it
could be that the sailors' religious faith (though naive and superstitious) is nonetheless enough
that they are permitted to die and go to some sort of heaven, while the Mariner must suffer
instead It could also be simply a case of divine prerogative—God has willed it and it is beyond
human reason to undeistand his ways Whatevei the case, it is the Manner who is left to
experience this dark night of the soul, and that "night" seems to be designed to last as long as it
takes to "save" the Mariner
During this portion of the text, the Mariner shows just how resistant he is to the irrational
lesson he must learn Watching the souls depart from his crewmates and witnessing the
appearance of Death's ship do not bring him to repentance and do not impart religious
imagination After these experiences the Mariner still "despiseth the creatures of the calm" (gloss

The term "daik night of the soul" lefers to a poem and a treatise on that poem by sixteenth-centiuy monk, St John
of the Cross The phiase is a mclaphoi used to descube a period of loneliness and desolation expeiicnced "by the
soul in its jouiney upon the spintual road to the attainment of the peifect union of love with God" (St John 1)

39

175)—which function as stand-in symbols for the albatross —referring to them as "slimy
things" (238). In this condition he finds that he cannot pray, for his attempts yield only "A
wicked whisper" (246), and the gloss makes it clear that "the curse liveth" (gloss 175).
As the Mariner's supernatural experience continues, it seems that his way along the path
to unity with God, humans, and nature requires that he first be deprived of communion with all
three. Not only is he deprived of communion with God (via prayer), but he also cannot commune
with living creatures (for his crew are dead and he cannot yet see non-human creatures as
embodiments of'"Life" 40 ). In a Eucharistic reference added in 1800, Coleridge heightens this
theme of non-communion by portraying Fear as taking communion (another name for the
Eucharist) with the Mariner—"Fear at my heart, as at a cup, / My life-blood seemed to sip!"
(204-5).
The Mariner's isolation is nowhere more evident than in Part IV. Here his dead
crewmates' bodies litter the deck about his feet (252). Their flesh fails to rot, and their dead eyes
stare curses at the Mariner for seven days and seven nights (260-1). The Mariner describes the
spiritual depth of his isolation here as he notes that, while "An orphan's curse would drag to hell
/ A spirit from on high," the curse in the eyes of his dead crewmates is "more horrible than that"
(257-9). It is at this point that he notices the water-snakes and everything begins to change.

These "slimy things" (238) serve the same thematic purpose as the albatross The Manner's initial rejection of
them shows that he is still unable to see their saciamcntal quality His latei blessing of the snakes comes to
symbolize his "convcision"—for it is then that he at last exhibits religious imagination
40
Wnting about "Life" Coleridge asserts that "This, theiefore, all animals possess, and man as an animal" (Aids 4),
suggesting that this noumenal, in-dwelling of "Life" is present even in animals—and consequently in the watersnakes and albatross

40

The water-snakes are described as moving in "tracks of shining white," as having an
"elfish light" flake off of them,41 and as being trailed by a "flash of golden fire" (273-81).
Perhaps the most important aspect of these descriptions is that, where the Mariner earlier
described such sea creatures as "slimy things" (238), he now describes them in such a way that
they are characterized by light and beauty. Also important to note here, however, is the
supernatural quality of these descriptions. The "tracks of shining white" suggest an ethereal or
angelic nature not unlike the biblical description of Christ on the mount of transfiguration—
"And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow" (Mark 9:3). Likewise, by calling
the light "elfish" Coleridge evokes a sense of otherworldliness, while his mention of the "flash of
golden fire" (an unnatural image) likewise suggests a sense of the transcendent.42 At the same
time, the phenomena described are also natural ones. John Livingston Lowes has taken great
pains to demonstrate how Coleridge's descriptions in "Mariner" (particularly those of the watersnakes) are actually based on the real-life reports of sailors (Lowes 31-48). It would seem, then,
that the Mariner's descriptions here demonstrate his newfound sacramental vision, for in these
descriptions he attributes supernatural, sacred qualities to natural creatures The Mariner's
change of heart, or "conversion," is further evinced by the fact that he is now able to bless the
water-snakes (287). While he earlier killed a sacramental creature, he now looks upon the snakes
and finds that "A spring of love gushed from my heart" (285). It is only at this moment that he

The word "elf appeals at least as early as Beowulf (where it is spelled "ylfe" (112) The woid references preChristian Anglo-Saxon noumenal beliefs and thus hints at the Mariner's newfound perception of otherworldly
qualities within the natuial world, as well as piovidmg another interesting example of the mterpenetration of
"pagan" and Christian mythologies within this text
It is notable that the image of gold (and other precious metals) purified by fire is a common biblical trope for
pmification (Num 32 22-3, Jei 6 29, Ez 22 18, Mai 3 2-3, etc ) The Manner has ceitainly passed through the
piovcibial fiie by this point, so the image seems apt to describe his own recent spiritual jouiney

41

finds he is able to pray again (288). The gloss makes the pivotal nature of this scene even more
clear, noting that "the spell begins to break" (gloss 176).

The Third Stage: Communion with the "One Life"
At the moment he blesses the snakes the Mariner is drawn into simultaneous communion with
nature (via the snakes) and with God (via his renewed ability to pray). His response to the snakes
also seems to purchase his reprieve from suffering as he lapses into a period of sleep—a sleep so
potent it "slid into [his] soul" (296). He soon awakes from this "soul" sleep (and from his "dark
night of the soul") and experiences a refreshing rain (perhaps a symbol of his baptism into a true
religion) and the presence of a "roaring wind" (309), which signals both his deliverance from
being lost on a still sea (just as the wind brought by the albatross earlier rescued the ship), as well
as a sort of Pentecost-experience, like that of the apostles who experienced a "mighty rushing
wind" (Acts 2:2) when they received the Holy Spirit.43 While the poem has, from the start, been
filled with examples of sacramental nature, these examples seem suddenly very obvious (as in
the case of the rain and wind) The Manner is no longer just surrounded by sacraments in nature,
he now experiences them.
In the final stanzas of the poem, the Mariner provides the "moral" of the tale:
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

This connection is heightened when one notes that in the biblical Greek the same woid (pneumatos) is used for
both spirit and wind Coleridge was well-acquainted with biblical Gieek and would likely have been awaie of this
overlap Read in this light, the return of wind at this point in the text could also be viewed as a return of a hue
religious spiut to the Manna's hithcito merely lational faith (Chnstopher 118)

42

He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all. (612-7)
This moral has been often critiqued (Coleridge himself told Anna Laetitia Barbauld that the
poem had "too much" of a moral, and that this was its "only, or chief fault" [446n6]);
nonetheless, Coleridge left these lines in subsequent editions of the poem, suggesting that his
self-critique was disingenuous (which was not uncommon for Coleridge when discussing his
own work). If the Mariner had acted according to the above-quoted maxims, he would certainly
not have shot the albatross and would have spared himself a great deal of trouble. Additionally,
when this moral is viewed as flowing from Coleridge's conception of the "One Life," it makes
absolute sense that the loving of birds and snakes would be the ethical responsibility of every
Christian.
For Coleridge, the One Life is the animating process in nature {Theory of Life 35), it is
present in all natural things (40, 47), and it is what makes biological life, development and even
evolution possible (41-2). This One Life (which he sometimes calls "Nature") is not God, but it
is somehow connected to God as the "handmaid under the eye of her sovereign Master" (85).
Coleridge's mature understanding of "Life" represents an attempt to avoid pantheism (he
explicitly states that "Life" is in everything but is not God), while providing a divine telos for the
universe, and drawing the cosmos together into a mode of interrelationship Coleridge refers to as
"unity in multeity" (42).
This understanding of the One Life provides a basis for the union of the individual with
nature, humans, and the divine. The first part of the Mariner's journey is characterized by a

43

movement away from this sort of unity and into isolation, and the second portion is marked by a
consistent movement toward communion with all aspects of the One Life. The moral of
"Mariner," then, can be viewed as a practical expression of Coleridge's rational religion.44 It is
not in itself a creed, but rather expresses how an individual empowered by religious imagination
might act. If one believes that all of nature is indwelt by a divine, creative power which is the
servant of the Creator, then one should be bound to love and respect "All things both great and
small" for they are sacraments by which one may be pointed toward the Creator. It is this quality,
which cannot be empirically tested or rationally discerned, but must be intuited via the
imagination, that the Mariner has learned to see. Only once he has intuited this reality can he
exhibit the respect and love for nature that will draw him into communion with the One Life.
The Mariner's newfound connection with the One Life helps to explain the apparently
mystical hold that he has over the Wedding-Guest (early on the Mariner "holds him with his
glittering eye" [13] and "has his will" [16] as the Wedding-Guest "listens like a three years'
child" who "cannot choose but hear" [15, 18]). Because the post-journey Mariner is in such close
communion with the noumenal world, it would seem that he is able to speak directly to the soul
of the Wedding-Guest. His parting words to the Wedding-Guest, uttered immediately before he
dispenses his moral, are entirely concerned with this concept of true communion:
O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide wide sea:
So lonely 'twas, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
It would be anachronistic to apply Coleridge's full, mature conception of 'Life' to such an early work as
"Mariner"; however, much of the poem does seem to make more sense in light of at least an early, simplified
understanding of 'Life.'

O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
T i s sweeter far to me,
To walk together to the kirk
With a goodly company!-

To walk together to the kirk,
And all together pray,
While each to his great Father bends,
Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
And youths and maidens gay! (597-609)
Here the Mariner acknowledges his earlier state of isolation from God and from humans, and
contrasts this state with his current one in which he enjoys communion with people of all ages
before the presence of God. Immediately after this section he proclaims his "moral" in which he
connects love of all creatures with prayer, thus completing the triune nature of his communion
with humans, God, and nature—"all things both great and small" (615).

Conclusion: The Beauty of Eternal Penance
The epigraph added to "Mariner" in 1817 states that "there are more invisible than visible
natures in the universe" (Epigraph 167). For Coleridge, a life that is only able to intuit the visible
natures (phenomena) is incomplete. A purely rational religion (like that of the eighteenth-century
rationalists) is not enough for Coleridge, for it has no understanding of the sacramental nature of
the universe. Likewise, a religious experience that dwells only upon the supernatural is also

45

empty, for it cannot produce true faith and functions as an obstruction to true communion.
Through his portrayal of the Everyman, the Mariner, Coleridge has provided an example of the
secondary imagination at work. Here he has placed the faith/reason debate of the late eighteenth
century into a different light, dissolving the extreme opposition of these dichotomous positions,
and bringing them together in his presentation of the Mariner's mature faith as one that is the
culmination of both reason and feeling.
Ultimately, Coleridge's synthesis of reason and feeling functions to posit a faith that
admits the importance of human understanding but insists on the necessity of sacramental vision
to transcend understanding and allow the individual to intuit noumena. This blending of
understanding and sacramental vision, of reason and feeling, is what makes up the religious
imagination. The religious imagination is not merely a superstitious acceptance of the
supernatural (as depicted in the sailor's judgement), but is rather a Coleridgean "suspension of
disbelief (Biographia Ch. 14). Religious imagination employs human understanding, but also
admits the limits of reason—like its inability to reveal the true substance of things (the ding an
sich). It is by this synthesis of reason and feeling that the religious imagination makes it possible
for individuals to dwell in "uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact and reason" (Keats 942-3).
There are two senses in which the Mariner could be considered damned in the poem. The
first is when his shipmates die and he is miraculously sustained, and forced to undergo his
hellish, "dark night" of spiritual isolation. The beauty of this damnation is quite obvious in light
of my reading of the poem: it is a judgement that is not annihilative, but rather serves to facilitate
the Mariner's eventual attainment of religious imagination and thus his redemption. The second
sense in which the Mariner could be considered damned is that he appears at the end of the poem

46

to be sentenced to a sort of undead existence in which his life is greatly prolonged (perhaps
indefinitely45). This is a wandering existence (much like that to which Cain is sentenced in
Byron's text) in which his penance is acted out through his repeatedly being compelled to share
his story with random strangers. While some might see this as a fate worse than death, I argue
that his encounter with the water-snakes at sea has changed this cursed existence into a blessed
one. Because of his newfound sacramental perception, his post-voyage existence is a joyous one
characterized by his triune communion with the One Life, and filled with a sacramental
enjoyment of nature (from his salvific blessing of the water-snakes, to his "baptism" in rain, to
his "Pentecost" experience in the wind).
To this man who earlier experienced complete loss of communion, his current, wandering
life is a blessing because he has the repeated opportunity to meet with people and tell them the
tale that led him to a fuller understanding of and connection to Life. It is of note that this life is
even "sweeter than the marriage-feast" (601). While this may suggest that he enjoys his
wandering existence even more than attending weddings, it should also be noted that heaven is
often referred to in the Bible as "the wedding feast of the Lamb." The Mariner is "damned" in
that he cannot enter the wedding feast (heaven), and must spend his existence enacting a penance
for his crime. However, by his own confession he states that his "damned" existence has the
potential—when lived under the guiding light of religious imagination—to make a heaven out of

In Kathleen Cobum's edition of his notebooks (1957), Coleridge can be found expressing his frustration at the
"blunder" of some engiavings of the poem which "repicsent the An M as an old man on boaid ship " He wutes that
the Manner "was in my mind the evcilasting wandenng Jew—had told this story ten thousand times since the
voyage, which was in his caily youth and 50 yeais before" {Notebooks 1 2, Note 45) This comment seems to lend
credence to the suggestion that the Mannet may indeed live indefinitely (like the Wandenng Jew of Chnstian
tiadition)

47

his earthly hell.46 It would seem that, from the Mariner's own confession, he is truly, beautifully
damned.

Some might object to this "happy" characterization of the Mariner's fate by noting that when compelled to tell his
tale, the Marinei is "wienched / With a woeful agony" (578-9), and his "heart within [him] bums" (585) However,
who is to say that the piesence of discomfort is inherently bad1? For instance, when the biblical prophet, Jeremiah,
rues to stop himself from speaking of God he proclaims "Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any
more in his name But his woid was in mine heait as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weaiy with
forbeaung, and I could not stay" (Jer 20 9)

Chapter 3
Byron's Cain

Choose betwixt love and knowledge—since there is
No other choice (Byron, Cain 1.429-30)

When Byron first published his closet drama "Cain: A Mystery" in December 1821 it was
received with generally hostile reviews. Although a few visionaries like Shelley, Scott and
Goethe saw "Cain" as "a work of unparalleled genius" (McGann, "Notes" 1071), it was
denounced by many as a heretical, or at least atheistic, work. One anonymous reviewer for
Gentlemen's Magazine wrote that the play "is unquestionably one of the most pernicious
productions that ever proceeded from the pen of a man of genius" (Rutherford, Critical Heritage
219). Another anonymous reviewer of "Cain," writing in the Eclectic Review, called Byron an
"apostle of infidelity" whose purpose was, in "the very spirit of the fabled sphinx," to stump
believers with "dark enigmas" so that "those who fail to unravel them, may perish" (219).
There is no doubt that "Cain" questions many aspects of early nineteenth-century
orthodoxy. Byron's re-telling of the biblical story casts the first murderer as its hero. Here Cain
is an almost Promethean character who dares to question God's goodness, and who aligns
himself with a remarkably sympathetic Lucifer. Cain's pursuit of knowledge ultimately ends in
fratricide, but not before the eponymous character rejects belief in the goodness of God,
denounces the doctrine of Original Sin, and criticizes the atonement of Christ. At a time when
Church of England orthodoxy had already borne the assault of more than a century of "rational"

49

doubting, and heterodox challenges, it is not surprising that many in England saw "Cain" as
just another attack against the foundations of orthodoxy. Indeed, many modern-day critics view
"Cain" in a similar light48—though they are admittedly less concerned by the play's challenges
to Christianity. This view of "Cain" as an attack on orthodoxy is, however, an unfortunate
misreading of the text. Far from assaulting the foundations of faith, "Cain" is actually an epic
tale of the tension between faith and reason, and along with its critique of pious ignorance, it
offers a much stronger censure of purely rational approaches to faith.
Byron's play is not a theodicy nor is it a polemic against the Christian faith; rather, it is
"a wandering in those desert regions without Paradise, looking back at Eden with bitterness, and
with longing" (McVeigh, "Cainne's Cynne" 287). There is invective here, but there is also
sympathy; God is both challenged and vindicated. It is in this ambiguous place (in the mystery)
between bitterness and longing, invective and sympathy, challenge and vindication, that humans
dwell. Ultimately, "Cain" is not merely a play about the conflict of faith and reason; rather, it is
about the struggle of humans to find happiness despite their uncertainty.
Cain's stance toward God and faith is a sceptical "doubt that culminates in no new
affirmation whatsoever" (Hoagwood 36). Atheism and heresy are by no means affirmed in the
text and, to the degree that they are introduced by Cain, they are "dramatically invalidated"
(Hirst "Orthodoxy" 253) by Byron's unsympathetic portrayal of their champion. On the other
hand, Byron goes to considerable lengths to avoid an explicit affirmation of God's goodness—he
even alters the biblical record, replacing God's final appearance with the proclamation of an
47
48

For more on these challenges see pages 16-20

For example, Paul Canloi aigues that "Cain" affums that "there is evil in the world because its Cieator is not
good, at least not in any human sense of good" (55) Leslie Marchand aigues that, in "Cain," "the roles of god and
devil aie reversed, for Lucifer is a champion of the 'good principle'" (Byron's Poetry 86) Similaily, Edward
Bostettei argues that "Lucifei is undoubtedly speaking for Byion" (572), and concludes that the play is a "tragedy of
the intellectual rebel who attempts to defy and bieak free from the tiaditional faith" (571)

50

angel, so that he can avoid a Job-like theodical ending. However, Byron's scepticism toward
faith does not extend absolutely to all aspects of "Cain." While Byron does not affirm anything
about God, he does affirm the primacy of love as the faculty which makes happiness and
community possible, despite uncertainty, by enabling individuals to dwell in the mysterious
meeting place between faith and reason.
At first glance, "Cain" seems to portray a universe of dualistic conflict between humanity
and spirit, or feeling and intellect. It is tempting to see Cain as placed in the impossible position
of inhabiting either the human or intellectual side of this dichotomy, forever longing for the
unobtainable other half.49 However, "Cain," much like Coleridge's "Mariner," is concerned with
the reconciliation—not the reinforcement—of these binary oppositions. "Cain" demonstrates the
insufficiency of any philosophy that privileges either reason or faith to the neglect of the other.
Cain's family appear hard-hearted and ignorant when they operate under faith alone, while Cain
appears cold, arrogant, and destructive in his single-minded search for enlightenment. Like
"Mariner," "Cain" demonstrates that the undue privileging of either of these positions results in
the movement of the individual out of community with God, humans, and the natural world.
Daniel McVeigh notes the dualistic conflict in "Cain," but asserts that Cam is not damned
by this fracture, but rather must learn to wander in its "desert regions" ("Cainne's Cynne" 287).
This is where the concept of religious imagination enters into my reading of "Cam," for it is only
This view can be found in Daniel McVeigh's leading which poses Cain as a "divided peisonahty" (283)
McVeigh suggests that Cain's ego is fragmented between the human, "gentler half as symbolized in Adah, and "his
own spiritual aspnation" which finds its "affirmation in the speeches of Lucifer" (282-3) Leonard Michaels
provides a similar reading which poses spirit and intellect as "virtually equivalent" and forming one side of the
dichotomy which posits love on the other side (73) Michaels concludes that, since Cam "finds himself essentially
intellect, it is implicit that human love is incompatible with him" (73) William Fitzpatnck descnbes a similar
dualism between humanity and spnit in his assertion that "Cam" poi trays "man" in the "mtoleiable position" of
having to "either submit his will to an inscrutable, inaccessible God, or else risk damnation by following the
demands and yearnings of his own fallen nature" (615) As I have already mentioned, Bostetter suggests that Cain
issues a challenge to tiaditional cosmologies, while also being a play about the intellectual rebel who stiugglcs to no
avail against tiaditional faith (571)

51

via a renewed perception that the individual can be content with mystery and restored to both
human and divine community. However, where Coleridge's "Mariner" demonstrates an elevation
of sacramental vision as the means by which an individual attains religious imagination, I argue
that Byron's "Cain" suggests love as the means by which happiness and community can be
attained, despite the uncertainty of human existence.

Act 1: "Choose betwixt love and knowledge"
In Act 1 Byron sets up a dialectic between Cain and his sister/wife Adah. Here Cain represents
the path of isolation, travelled via the pursuit of pure reason, while Adah represents the path of
community and happiness found only by subordinating reason to love. By the end of the first act
it becomes clear that Cain's single-minded pursuit of reason is incompatible with faith, and that
the rift between him and his family is growing in proportion to the degree to which he searches
for rational understanding. At the same time, Adah is presented as a possible example of how
reason and faith can be united under the banner of love.
Both Cain's obsession with knowledge and his consequent isolation from God and
humanity are established in the play's opening scene. While his family offers prayers and
sacrifices to God, Cain proclaims that he has nothing to be thankful for (1.1.28). When his family
leaves he launches "a cheap-shot at his father" (Eggenschweiler 236), and unleashes a barrage of
questions. He wishes to know why he must die, why he suffers for his parent's sin, and (the crux
of it all) whether it is true that God's all-powerfulness must also necessitate his being "all-good"
(1.1.76-7). While these questions are not evil, Cain's relentless pursuit of their answers makes
him unable to dwell—even temporarily—in their mystery. The result is his inability to love God
or dwell in peaceful community with his family.

52

As the act progresses, Cain's pursuit of knowledge intensifies and his sense of alienation
from his family grows proportionally. When Lucifer tells Cain that he must "Choose twixt love
and knowledge—since there is / No other choice" (1.1.429-30), Cain indicates his decision by
abandoning his devoted wife to join Lucifer on a journey to find knowledge beyond the
boundaries of the earth. Adah protests against his abandonment of love, entreating Cain to think
of his parents and children, but Cain denies feeling love for his parents, and asserts that, besides
Adah, "I love nought else" (1.1.433). Even this love is drawn into question, however, for when
Adah tells Cain that all she desires is his happiness, he interrupts her saying, "Be thou happy
then alone— / 1 will have nought to do with happiness, / Which humbles me and mine" (1.1.4657).
Unlike Cain, Adah is able to find consolation in the love of her family and God. She is
among the worshippers in the opening scene and she repeatedly voices her love for her family
throughout the play. Where Cain questions whether God's "all-powerful[ness]" necessarily
entails his goodness (1.1.76-7), Adah confidently addresses the same concern in an affirmative
statement when she tells Lucifer "Omnipotence / Must be all goodness" (1.1.390-1). Adah
repeatedly appeals to Cain's heart in her attempts to reconcile him to herself, his family, and to
God. It would be a mistake, however, to understand Adah as the purely emotional creature who
contrasts Cain's pure rationalism, for Adah is also a rational woman. When Lucifer questions her
faith in God's goodness, she presents him with ready answers, demonstrating that she has already
wrestled with these questions. Also, when she tells Cain that she could not be happy alone, "but
with those around us, / 1 think I could be so, despite of death" (1.1.467-8), she demonstrates that,
like Cain, she is concerned by the spectre of death that awaits her; however, unlike Cain, she is

53

able to face the mystery of death by trusting in the goodness of God and abiding in the love of
her family.
What separates Cain from Adah is his refusal to accept that there is anything that cannot
ultimately be accounted for by reason; however, as Wolf Hirst has pointed out, "[n]o amount of
stoicism, rationalistic argument, or Faustian aspiration will compensate for denial of feeling . . .
Redemption can be brought only by wedding the understanding to love."50 This union of
understanding and love, and the faith that flows from it, is glimpsed at in Act 1 in Adah's
character.
When the search for answers draws Adah's love of God or her family into question, she
forsakes reason, and chooses love. This is why, when Satan probes her statement about God's
omnipotence necessitating his goodness, she responds "Fiend! tempt me not with beauty; thou art
fairer / Than was the serpent, and as false" (1.1.393-4). Knowing that Lucifer is the enemy of her
God and of her parents, she refuses to seek answers from him. It is ironic that this choice to
elevate love above reason results in her making a choice that is, in fact, quite rational: the choice
to dwell in mystery rather than seek answers from the avowed enemy of her family and her God.
While Cain's approach is, perhaps, the more intellectually honest, it is striking that it is
Adah who draws the reader's sympathy. It is her love that is unrequited, and it is she alone who
pursues Cain and seems to love him sacrificially (as shown by her choice to follow him into exile
at the play's conclusion). In contrast, while Cain's enlightened questioning is perhaps somewhat
sympathetic in the opening, his refusal to love those who love him and his cool treatment of his
wife cause him to appear heartless and unappealing. Cain's speeches (which identify valid
concerns) come across not "in the spirit of innocent rationality and empiricism [like] one
50

Hirst, "Orthodoxy," 256.

54

discovers in the [medieval] mysteries"; rather, "they often seem, in their sullen, brutish style
intended only to reduce pious feeling to banal reality" (Michaels 72). The questions in "Cain"
"represent a repudiation of feeling by intellect" and, if Lucifer is correct that one must choose
between the two, then Cain has chosen the entirely undesirable and even absurd, for intellect, as
portrayed in Cain's questioning, "seems to repudiate itself (73).
The final lines of Act 1 show Lucifer taking Cain on a journey to find knowledge while
Adah chases after him, crying "Cain! my brother! Cain!" (1.1.563). This scene generates
sympathy for the lover over the seeker of knowledge, and also presents the first of many echoes
of the Fall from Eden. When Lucifer offers knowledge to Cain he claims that he will not "ask
thee to partake of fruits / Which shall deprive thee of a single good" (1.1.901). Despite his claim,
however, it is clear that this moment is in many ways a re-enactment of the Fall. Just as in the
Genesis story Cain's mother, Eve, chose to elevate her desire for knowledge above the call for
obedience demanded by her love of God, so too Cain is acting in a sort of unloving disobedience
(to Adah's wishes), by pursuing his own fruit of knowledge. At the end of the first act Byron
teases out this theme by showing Lucifer, like the snake, trying to convince a human that the
forsaking of love in order to gain the fruit of knowledge will have no negative consequence. At
the same time, Byron's portrayal of Cain accepting Lucifer's claim "neatly solves the moral
problem involved in Cain's inheritance of his parents' sin by making him repeat it" (Hirst,
"Orthodoxy" 265). Already Cain's inability to accept aspects of God which seem irrational is
leading Cain to refute his own reasoning.
In his essay "Byron's Cain as Sacred Executioner," Harold Fisch remarks that in the
biblical narratives of Eve and of Cain "we have two Fall stories, two alternative myths of
origins" (29). He asserts that the Bible clearly elevates the Fall of Adam and Eve and that Byron

55

deviates from this precedent by "placing a highly unorthodox emphasis on Cain as hero" (29).
While I agree with Fisch that these stories represent two accounts of the Fall, I disagree that they
should be viewed as alternative myths, and that Byron's emphasis on Cain is a deviation from
the biblical emphasis. The biblical story of Cain and Abel is a tale of the recapitulation of
humanity into original sin. Cain's role as agriculturist symbolizes an attempt to regain the
Garden of Eden which was lost through his parents' sin. His own act of hatred in murdering his
brother, however, demonstrates that it is not just his mother and father who are responsible for
the Fall, but that he too is guilty of "falling." Byron's text places great emphasis on this
repetition of the original sin. Cain repeatedly argues the unfairness of being punished for his
parents' sin, but then he commits that sin himself. Paul Cantor has even gone so far as to suggest
that Cain "completes the Fall, because his crime leads to the fragmentation of the human race,
which otherwise might have remained literally one great big happy family, incest and all" (52).
Where Byron's text deviates from the biblical source is that he emphasizes the repetition
of original sin even more than the Bible. Byron frames Cain's sin as flowing from a pursuit of
knowledge, making it appear even more similar to his parents' sin (eating the fruit of knowledge)
than the jealous murder committed by his biblical counterpart. By framing Cain's story in this
manner, Byron not only portrays Cain as falling into original sin, but actually names that original
sin as the naked pursuit of knowledge. In Act 1, as Cain leaves his pleading wife behind to depart
on his search for knowledge, his communion with humanity begins to fracture. He is already out
of close communion with God and with his wider family, but his continued search for knowledge
now begins to sever the unity of husband and wife.

Act 2: Reason Repudiates Itself

56

Much like in "Mariner," the protagonist of "Cain" becomes isolated from human community as
he experiences a "deep" religious experience in an unfamiliar realm where the supernatural
appears nakedly before him. In Act 2, Cain's refusal to dwell in mystery results in his knowledge
growing increasingly disproportionate to his ability to love. What is more, as Cain delves deeper
into his search for reason, he actually becomes more and more irrational. His stubborn resolution
to take nothing on faith ends up constituting an act of faith in itself. This act of faith emerges in
Act 2 as a deeply irrational faith in Cain's own reason. Where his family chooses to trust in their
faith in God, and in each other, Cain trusts only in himself. Cain's family find their answers in
reliance on the communal experience of collective humanity (admittedly a small collective) and
upon divine revelation. Cain's rejection of these sources belies his arrogance and a rather striking
degree of faith. Above divine revelation and the collected wisdom of the human race, he looks to
his own rational mind. This might be considered heroic if, as in the first act, Cain's views
continued to appear plausible in comparison to his family's views. This is not the case, however;
for Cain's reliance on reason becomes an absurdity. By the end of Act 2, Cain finds himself
affirming all manner of paradox in his search to deny the central paradox that an all-powerful,
all-good God could allow evil to exist.
Cain's lack of faith in anything outside himself becomes immediately apparent in the
opening lines of Act 2 where Byron parallels the biblical narrative of Peter walking to Christ on
the water.51 Here Cain exclaims that he can "tread on air, and sink not; yet I fear / To sink"
(2.1.1-2). In response Lucifer directly invokes the New Testament narrative, telling Cain that a
time is coming

51

Byron's prefatory claim that his play "has nothing to do with the New Testament" (881) seems entirely
disingenuous. There are numerous, blatant references to Christ throughout the play, leading one to wonder if Byron
was simply teasing his readers, or trying to protect himself against more severe accusations of heresy.

57

when toss'd upon some water-drops,
A man shall say to a man, 'Believe in me,
And walk the waters;' and the man shall walk
The billows and be safe. / will not say
Believe in me, as a conditional creed
To save thee. (2.1.17-22)
The biblical story of Peter's walking on water is a tale of how the faith of an individual in God
can sustain him through what reason would call impossible (i.e., walking on water). Cain has no
such faith, but he is sustained nonetheless. Lucifer requires worship, not belief, and he has
already explained that by not worshipping God, Cain has chosen to worship Lucifer (1.1.31720).
Having demonstrated his lack of faith in external sources during the "space-walking"
episode, Cain proceeds to establish a sort of faith of his own. During the eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries, one of the most common arguments for God's existence was a teleological
argument based on natural theology. In essence, this apologetic argued that the presence of
purpose in the universe proved the existence of a creator and, from this premise, concluded that
creation revealed much about the nature of the creator. In Act 2, as Cain moves through space, he
proclaims
Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are!
How beautiful ye are! how beautiful
Your works, or accidents, or whatsoe'er
52

This was most popularly articulated by William Paley in a number of works published around the turn of the
century. Arguments for God's existence based upon teleology and natural theology have been common throughout
Church history, and have been taught by thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, among many
others.

58

They may be! Let me die, as atoms die,
(If that they die) or know ye in your might
And knowledge! (2.1.110-5)
Up to this point Cain has never questioned the existence of God—only his goodness has been
doubted—and even Lucifer has repeatedly acknowledged the existence of God. It seems odd,
then, that confronted with the beauty of creation Cain should not know who to ascribe this
beauty to—"Oh God! Oh Gods! or whatsoe'er ye are!" (2.1.110). Here Cain's reason leads him
into a paradoxical rejection of the belief in God's existence which has hitherto been affirmed by
his family, Lucifer, and even himself. Rather than allowing the beauty of creation to testify to
him the existence of a good God, Cain doubts his own pre-established belief in the reality of God
(or at least that of the biblical God).
It could be argued that Cain is an exceptionally good empiricist who is here rejecting all
presuppositions in favour of the sensory observations before him (i.e., the beauty of the cosmos).
However, in the same speech in which Cain doubts the biblical God, he also proclaims his desire
to know God—"Let me die . . . or know ye in your might / And knowledge! (2.1.113-5).
Although these sound like the words of a good empiricist, Cain never once exerts any energy in
the pursuit of the desire his words proclaim. He once asks Lucifer to show him where God
dwells (2.2.366), but he never attempts to observe or know God. Cain is not a good empiricist
and, as his naivety and, frankly, his ineptitude as a philosopher, become more apparent his
rejection of all outside sources of wisdom in favour of his own empirical conclusions seems
foolish. That all his knowledge-seeking ultimately leads him to fratricide proves the ultimate
absurdity of his philosophy.

59

Cain's ineptitude as a philosopher again asserts itself when he unwittingly utters one of
the most common proverbs used to explain the presence of evil in the universe—that darkness
exists so that the light may be rendered more beautiful by comparison. Stricken by the beauty of
space, Cain claims that it is "the night, which makes both beautiful / The little shining fire-fly in
its flight, / And the immortal star in its great course" (2.1.129-31). Shortly after uttering these
words, however, Cain catches his first glimpse of Hades, and curses God, proclaiming "Cursed
be / He who invented life that leads to death!" (2.2.18-9). This statement is doubly problematic.
First, according to Cain's comment about light and darkness, should not the presence of death
render life more beautiful by comparison? Yet he explicitly rejects this argument (2.2.300-5).
Secondly, as Cain curses God for creating life only to destroy it, he belies his ignorance that the
path he is currently taking will ultimately lead him to become death, by visiting it for the first
time upon the earth when he kills Abel. Later in this scene Lucifer makes it clear that it is, in
fact, Cain's reason that will lead him to bring death upon the earth. He tells Cain, "It may be
death that leads to the highest knowledge" (2.2.164), and proceeds to explain, rather
syllogistically, that because death is more certain than anything else it "leads to the surest
science" (166). That Cain's first major act after returning from Hades is to commit murder
suggests that he has bought into Lucifer's argument that the attainment of the "highest
knowledge" (164) requires the experience of death.
As Scene 2 progresses, Cain speaks a further unwitting proverb that could be used to
defend God against the attacks of reason. When Lucifer challenges Cain's romantic notions of
the stars, asserting that Cain has only "seen them from afar," Cain retorts, "Distance can but
diminish glory—they / When nearer must be more ineffable" (2.2.246-8). The same has often
been said of God—that the closer one draws to him, the more glorious his ways appear. Again,

60

Cain's statement seems doubly problematic. To begin with, it is oddly based upon faith or desire,
rather than any logical proof—after all he has not empirically proved this belief by observing the
stars at close range for himself. Also, since Cain is now the most distant he has ever been from
relationship with God his own statement renders him less fit than ever to pronounce judgement
on God. As William Fitzpatrick has suggested, "[o]ne of the fundamental causes of the suffering
of Cain" is that he does not "talk to God and cannot understand his relation to the world" (616).
Cain is too distant from God to hope to understand him—perhaps if Cain drew nearer to God the
apparent paradoxes of God would be dissolved. For this to happen either Cain needs to seek God
by drawing nearer to him, or God needs to reveal himself to Cain. For those sympathetic to Cain,
one of the most frustrating aspects of the play is that the latter never seems to happen. Such a
reader might argue that if God is indeed all-good and all-powerful then everything would be
made right if he would just reveal himself to Cain. The problem with this argument, however, is
that if God is all-good and all-powerful (and thus all-knowing as well) then his refusal to directly
reveal himself to Cain must be justified. This argument is frustrating to the rational mind, for it is
like suggesting that God's all-goodness and all-powerfulness are proved by his choosing not to
prove them. There seems little doubt, however, that Adah would accept this line of thought. It
is this different valuing of love and knowledge that is the difference between Adah and Cain, and
it is also the reason that it is Cain, and not Adah, who is cut off from community with God and
humanity at the play's close.
Since God seems to have chosen not to reveal himself to Cain, the only remaining option
by which Cain could know God enough to ever love him is to draw near to him. Cain seems on
the brink of grasping this problem and drawing near to God toward the end of Scene 2 when he
In the next section I show that God does, in fact, reveal himself to Cain, though this is done through the persons of
Adah and Cain, and not in the sort of thcophany the reader might expect.

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realizes that the disclosure he has received from Lucifer has brought him no nearer to happiness.
Here he admits that God did well in prohibiting the tree of knowledge (2.2.235-6), and he also
becomes aware that, having seen much in visiting Hades, he has not seen the whole picture—
"show me where Jehovah dwells" (2.2.366), he demands of Lucifer. But Lucifer, of course, will
not reveal God and Cain does not press the issue.

Act 3: Cain's Crime and Curse
Despite the fact that Act 2 leaves Cain uncertain about the answers given him by Lucifer, and
open, perhaps for the first time, to the possibility that God's revelation could dispel his doubts,
he is as abrasive as ever at the start of Act 3. In his frustration that further knowledge has not
made him any happier, he proceeds to pick fights with everyone who is happy. He chastises
Adah for placing their son to rest under a "gloomy" cypress tree (3.1.5-6), though he
hypocritically proceeds to speak melancholy (gloomy) words to the sleeping boy; he rages
against God for "flattering dust [humanity] with glimpses of/ Eden and Immortality" only to
resolve "It back to dust again" (3.1.70-4); and he curses his parents, exclaiming, "they sinn'd,
then let them die!" (3.1.76). In this (terrifically misplaced) protest of his own intellectual and
moral superiority Cain shows the "fruit" of his pursuit of knowledge. He is both arrogant and
blind, and his protests—which at the start of the play were plausible attacks on faith—have now
deteriorated into "the frightful cliches of grumbling adolescents" (Eggenschweiler 236). Cain
cannot see that it is himself, and not God, who will resolve humanity "back to dust again"
(3.1.70-4) by the end of the act, and he is likewise blind to the fact that he has, at least
intellectually, already repeated his parents' sin by rejecting love in the pursuit of the fruit of
knowledge.

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Cain further proves the deterioration of his intellectual and moral status when he rails
against the future atonement of Christ. When Adah suggests that perhaps one day an atonement
will be made that might "redeem our race" (3.1.86), Cain retorts that no atonement can be made
"By sacrificing / The harmless for the guilty" (3.1.86-7)—ironic considering he is soon to
sacrifice his innocent brother. As God's love revealed among humanity (1 Jn. 4:9), Christ
represents Cain's essential need to see and hear God—Cain's rejection of the possibility of
Christ's atonement, then, further indicates just how lost he has become. This theoretical rejection
of God's revelation is soon followed by an act of physical rejection when Cain kills his brother,
Abel, who is himself a typological symbol for Christ.
Abel soon appears and, in a rather anticlimactic manner, Cain performs the perfunctory
murder of his brother. I suggest that the anticlimactic nature of this scene stems from the fact that
Cain has essentially already committed it. In Act 1 he made his choice to value knowledge over
love and it was at that point that he effectively "fell." Cain chose to be the first harbinger of
death on earth when he chose to place knowledge before love. The difference between him and
his brother, the man of knowledge and the man of love, cannot be more clear than when Abel
proclaims, "I love God far more / Than life" (3.1.315-6), immediately before Cain strikes him
with a brand and kills him.
Despite the anticlimactic nature of Abel's murder, the act is, nonetheless, significant. It is
this act that "leads to the fragmentation of the human race" (Cantor 52), that seals Cain's choice
to privilege reason over love, and that rejects God's self-revelation. In Act 2 Cain establishes his
need to see God up close, yet when the suggestion of such a revelation is made by Adah, he
rejects it. Now, at the play's culmination, when Abel stands before him as a pre-figuration of
Christ, Cain murders him.

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That Abel is, in fact, a Christ-figure can be established by his guiltless death, as well as
by his final words. Like Christ, who pleaded from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they
know not what they do" (Lk. 23:34), the dying Abel cries out,
Oh, God! Receive thy servant, and
Forgive his slayer, for he knew not what
He did. (3.1.318-20)
It is also from the cross that Christ asks John to watch over his mother (Jn. 19:27). Similarly,
Abel cries out,
Then may God forgive him [Cain]! Cain,
Comfort poor Zillah:—she has but one brother
Now. (3.1.334-6)
In the end, Cain becomes everything he hates. He hates his mother for "falling," yet he repeats
her act. He hates God for being remote, cold and unloving, yet Cain is all these things. Finally,
he fears and hates death for the pall it has laid over all of his joys, yet in the end it is Cain—the
one who asks Lucifer "what is death"—who becomes death by visiting it for the first time upon
humanity (Michaels 76). It is at this point that an angel appears and speaks judgment on Cain. He
is to have a mark upon his forehead, sealing him so that none should kill him (3.1.494-7) and,
though he begs the angel to let him die, it replies "It must not be" (3.1.499).
It is significant that Byron places Cain's judgement in the mouth of an angel for the
biblical narrative portrays God as speaking it (Gen. 4:9). This highlights the distance of God
from Cain, for even at his judgment God does not appear to him. Cain has already made clear his
rejection of God, so perhaps God does not appear at this point out of respect for Cain's choice, or
perhaps it is simply because he knows it would make no difference to Cain anyway. Regardless

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of God's reason for not appearing, however, this final scene emphasizes the fact that, despite
Cain's journey to gain knowledge, he ends the story no nearer to God than he began. His
newfound knowledge regarding the cosmos, death, and Hades has not granted him any clearer a
picture of his Maker than he had when he began. This judgment is also important because of the
angel's response to Cain's request to die—"It must not be" (3.1.499). These words suggest, as
many myths and legends have it, that Cain will be unable to die. If this is true, then, just like
Coleridge's Mariner, Cain's remaining existence is to be a wandering exile—the biblical account
says that he will be "a fugitive and a vagabond" (Gen. 4:12).
Cain's petition that the angel take his life in place of his brother's shows genuine grief
over Abel's death, but it does not signal any sort of repentance. Cain has no desire to change—
"That which I am, I am" (3.1.509). The repetition of the words "I am" signify that Cain will
suffer no other God but himself—for he is here taking the divine self-description for himself—"I
AM THAT I AM" (Ex. 3:14). This is a final proof that Cain has chosen solipsistically to place
his faith in no one but himself.
Immediately after the judgment speech the angel bids Cain to "fulfil thy days! and be thy
deeds / Unlike the last!" (3.1.517-8), but it seems clear that, while the opportunity for Cain to
change his ways is yet available, he has chosen his path and will not alter it. The closing lines of
the play echo this melancholy conclusion for, as Adah chooses to leave behind everything in
order to keep her immediate family together with Cain, she wishes a blessing on Abel—"Peace
be with him!"—to which Cain responds with the unfinished comment, "But with me!—" (5601), indicating that he whose life has been without peace is not likely to find it in the days to
come.

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Death becomes Him
Throughout the play Cain is presented with opportunities to choose his fate. Lucifer bids him
"Choose betwixt love and knowledge" (1.1.429; emphasis mine), Adah asks him to "choose
love" (1.1.431; emphasis mine), and Abel twice asks him to choose an altar (3.1.210, 212)—to
which Cain emphatically answers "I have chosen" (3.1.212). Even the angel who pronounces
Cain's judgment implies that he yet has a free will when he bids him "fulfil thy days! and be thy
deeds / Unlike the last!" (3.1.517-8). With each choice, Cain reaffirms his decision to chase
knowledge at the cost of love. In the end he gains much knowledge—by causing death he even
learns of what Lucifer called "the surest science" (2.1.166). This pursuit of pure reason,
however, leaves him isolated from God and from humanity; it gives him no joy and it brings him
damnation. He must now go into exile without even the eventual hope of annihilation—for he
now bears a mark that guarantees him safety (3.1.495). His damnation is perhaps best described
by the curse his mother proclaims upon him—that "the woods / Deny thee shelter! earth a home!
the dust / A grave! the sun his light! and heaven her God!" (3.1.441-3)—and it is capped by his
father's proclamation that "his spirit be his curse" (3.1.449). Though these parental curses are not
uttered with the authority of the angel's judgment, they nonetheless reflect the nature of Cain's
disconnection from Life. As a wanderer Cain will find no place of shelter; since he cannot be
killed he will find no grave in the dust; and since he cannot love he will not likely find his way to
God. His father's pronunciation that his spirit is his curse invokes a sort of living hell, for if his
spirit is a curse and he cannot liberate his body from his spirit (via death), then it would seem his
existence is now to be one of eternal accursedness of spirit. His mother's hellish pronouncement,
"May he live in the pangs which others die with" (3.1.435), evokes a picture of undying earthly

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torment—an existence eerily similar to the state of Coleridge's Mariner who must also undergo a
sort of Death-in-Life.
Ultimately Cain's damnation is a tragic one, but it is one that he has chosen. This choice
is also one which, like Eve's decision to eat the fruit, will affect his spouse and his descendants
after him. He hates his mother for condemning humans to the fate of death and, while it would
seem that his pursuit of knowledge has enabled him to avoid personally dying, it has also
damned him to an existence much worse than death, an existence in which he has himself
become death.
At the end of the text Cain and his immediate family depart into the desolation east of
Eden. Part of the great tragedy of the text is that Cain's wife, Adah, who is the most sympathetic,
loving, and pure character in the play, must suffer for Cain's flaws. In this circumstance,
however, she continues to stand in a dialectical opposition to Cain as a positive example.
Although Byron did not directly theorize about a religious imagination, as Coleridge did,
"Cain" nonetheless demonstrates the need of individuals for something very similar to a
Coleridgean religious imagination. Like Coleridge's "Mariner," "Cain" also evinces the need for
reason and feeling to work together in harmony. It is not Cain's reason that damns him; it is his
single-minded pursuit of reason. In the end, it is a lack of "right" perception that keeps Cain from
finding a middle ground between reason and feeling. In Act 2 he recognizes his need to see God
nearer, but he responds to this need by seeking knowledge of'God. When God is actually
revealed to Cain—in Adah's suggestion of atonement, and in the symbolic person of Abel—Cain
rails against it. Like Coleridge's Mariner, who murders the albatross because he cannot see that it
is a sacrament of the divine, so too Cain murders his brother, failing to see that he likewise
symbolizes the revelation of God in the phenomenal world.

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Also as in Coleridge's "Mariner," the individual who fails to reconcile reason and feeling
in "Cain" is characterized by a movement away from community and into isolation. Just as
Coleridge portrays isolation and community as the respective consequences of wrong and right
perception, so too Byron portrays community being revoked as a result of Cain's wrong
decisions. Cain repeatedly chooses knowledge over love, and the result of these choices is his
increasing isolation—not to mention psychological fragmentation as his reason causes him to
accept intellectual contradictions.
Cain's path is the pursuit of pure knowledge, and it leads to death; Adah's path is
characterised by the privileging of love before all else. Though it would seem at the end of
"Cain" that both paths lead to tragedy, it is important to note that both paths require a personal
choice. Cain's choice is to pursue pure knowledge. This choice leads to undying death, and if the
curses of his family are to be trusted, then his fate is also that of enduring torture—of damnation.
Adah's choice, on the other hand, is characterised by the privileging of love before all else—she
forsakes herself and gives up her own rights in order to follow her husband into his living hell.
Cain's choice is characterized by selfishness, and it leads him into increasing isolation and
lovelessness. Adah's fate, though immediately similar to Cain's, is governed by the choice to
remain constant to her privileging of love. Both paths lead to the desolation east of Eden, but
only Adah's provides the present hope of communion with her children and with her God, as
well as the eternal hope of peace beyond death. In Cain's damnation there is little but tragedy,
while in Adah's there is beauty.

Chapter 4
Believing and Speaking: The Healing of Chaos in "Christabel"

"Christabel" is the first two parts of an unfinished poem Coleridge began writing in 1797. While
praying outside her father's castle one night, the poem's eponymous heroine meets a mysterious
woman named Geraldine who claims to have been abducted from her home. Christabel helps the
weakened Geraldine into the castle and the two women share a bed for the night. In a scene
cloaked in ambiguity, and fraught with sexual tension, Geraldine gains an apparently magical
agency over Christabel and then, in Part 2, she tries to usurp Christabel's position as beloved
daughter of Sir Leoline. The poem ends with Geraldine in a position of power, while Christabel
is without agency and unable to speak of Geraldine's true nature.
Much like Byron's "Cain" and Coleridge's "Mariner," "Christabel" is a poem of religious
imagination. While "Mariner" is primarily concerned with a "right" perception that reconciles
faith and reason by breaking down the artificial dichotomy between the natural and the
supernatural, "Christabel" functions more grandly, addressing binary oppositions and disunity on
universal, local, and individual (i.e., psychological) levels. Like Byron's "Cain," it is love that
enables the movements toward unity and reconciliation in "Christabel," while the poem's
movements toward disunity are caused by the subordination of love to individual pursuits of
fulfillment. From the beginning, the narrative of "Christabel" establishes a world of disunity.
Binary oppositions are prevalent, human relationships are characterised by division, and even the
psyches of some major characters are fragmented. It is against these circumstances that the
religious imagination emerges.

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The religious imagination is depicted primarily in the characters of Christabel and the
bard, Bracy. When these characters' religious imagination is operating appropriately—i.e., when
they are seeing most clearly, or acting in a manner that helps others to see more clearly—the
disunity of "Christabel" is healed, and unification and wholeness begin to replace the conflict
and fragmentation of the poem's opening. Ultimately, however, religious imagination is
thwarted—this is the true tragedy of "Christabel" in its fragmentary form. It is impossible to say
where Coleridge would have taken this poem had he finished it (though many have speculated on
this topic), but what is clear, is that religious imagination is prevalent, even though it is
obstructed at the conclusion of Part 2.
One of the things that makes "Christabel" so interesting for discussions of imagination is
that it showcases both the primary and secondary imaginations at work. While, for Coleridge,
both forms of the imagination bring the individual into a co-creative relation with the divine (via
individual perception,54 or by more public creative acts, like poetry and the other arts),
"Christabel" demonstrates the insufficiency of the primary imagination to accurately perceive the
world without some form of exterior aid, or enlivening. Though the secondary imagination is not
the only way this enlivening can be provided,55 it is one important means by which this may
occur. Religious imagination, then, refers to both the primary imagination that is enlivened to
perceive the dissolution of false dichotomies, and the secondary imagination that functions to
enliven the primary in this manner. In "Christabel," the struggle of the primary imagination for

Remember that, for Coleridge, the act of perception literally "creates" the reality in which an individual lives, and
the pnmaiy imagination is "the living power and pnme agent of all human perception" (Biographia Ch. 13).
J. Robert Barth has argued peisuasively in, Romanticism and Transcendence, for the importance of piaycr in
"Christabel" as a means of human connection with the divine. Ronald Wcndhng has also demonstrated that
Colendgean Reason—a blending of Feeling and Understanding that is achieved through reflection—is another
important way by which the appaicnt opposition between phenomenal and noumenal worlds can be dissolved (161)

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right perception can be observed in the character of Christabel, while the battle of the secondary
imagination to enliven the primary is evident in the character of the bard, Bracy
At the start of the poem, both Christabel's and Bracy's perceptions are ignorant They
live in a world characterized by disunity, yet neither one seems to perceive this problem This
changes as the poem unfolds but, as in "Mariner" where a change in perception has to be
accompanied by a confession of that change (e g , the blessing of the water snakes), and in
"Cain" where the title character needs not just to assent intellectually to love's importance, but to
act according to it, so too a mere change in perception is not enough for Christabel or Bracy The
emergence of religious imagination in these two characters, then, is characterized first by a
change in their perception, but then is consummated by the confession or action in accordance
with that new perception Interestingly, this pattern also follows the biblical formula for
salvation—which requires that individuals believe in their hearts and confess with their mouths
(Rm 10 9) Every time Christabel and Bracy act m accordance with these dictates of the
religious imagination the result is either the movement towaid, or the potential foi the movement
toward, unity
Despite the prominence of the imagination in "Chiistabel," the poem is not merely a
poem about imagination For Coleridge, the imagination does not exist simply to celebrate itself,
rather, its purpose is always to point to something else

As the imagination is, by definition,

religious, it should not be surprising that its object in "Christabel" is spiritual in nature Many
commentators have noted that the poem is, at some level, a psychomachia—a battle for the soul
of Christabel As Virginia Radley so helpfully demonstiated in her classic essay, early readings

As I atgued in my introduction, the purpose of the imagination is not cieation—not even poetic cieation—but
rathei to use ciealive acts as a means by which to draw the individual into univtisal oneness and divine community

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of "Christabel" tended to fall into one of two categories: 1) a logical reading characterised by a
symbolic approach that views the poem as fitting within the genre of medieval ballad or tale of
horror; and 2) a psycho-sexual reading, which tends to read the text as autobiographical of
Coleridge's struggles with guilt and sexuality (532). Though quite different in approach, both
readings posit Geraldine as a corrupting influence upon Christabel. While more recent
scholarship has attempted to move away from these traditional readings, it is still common to see
Geraldine as representing something sinister and evil.57
My interpretation follows in the tradition of Ulmer and Cooper in that I see Geraldine as
representing Original Sin. While I am convinced that "Christabel" "works assiduously to identify
its protagonist with Original Sin" (Ulmer 380), however, my reading differs from most in this
tradition on one important point: the purpose and meaning of the "bedroom scene." My reading
understands this scene as both beautiful and terrible. The sexual union of Geraldine and
Christabel represents a unification of the latter's psyche—it is her admission, to herself, of her
whole being (which is a mixture of sin and innocence). This "admission of guilt" is the first
emergence of religious imagination, for it is here that Christabel begins to perceive herself
correctly.
In this chapter, then, I examine the function of religious imagination and the meaning to
which it points in "Christabel." I begin by establishing that the world in which "Christabel" takes
place is, indeed, a world of disunity. I then discuss how the religious imagination functions
57

For example, William Ulmer asserts that the poem "dramatizes Coleridge's Umtanan undei standing of Original
Sin. . " (377), and Andrew Cooper similaily suggests that Geraldine "is like Original Sin" in that she represents "the
oppoitunity for sinning" (89-90). Paul Magnuson calls Geraldine "Imagination disconnected from the good" (100),
and Andiew Elfenbein refers to the bedroom scene between Chnstabel and Gcialdme as an event "so burdened with
sublime horror that it cannot even be spoken" (177). The most common deviation from this view is the psychosexual reading that posits Geraldine as lepresenting lepiessed desue. Even in this reading, however, Geraldine at
least represents the perception of something sinister or evil—for why else would Chnstabel be so horrified by her
union with Geialdine in the bedioom scene?

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through perception and confession to effect the movement toward unity. To do this I discuss
Christabel's self-revelation as an example of the primary imagination at work, and Bracy's
general revelation as representing the work of the secondary imagination. Finally, I examine
these characters' confession (or lack thereof) of their respective revelations as the culmination of
their religious experience (the equivalent to the Mariner's "snake-blessing"). Ultimately, it is
clear that, though the religious imagination is thwarted at the close of this fragment, it is,
nonetheless, at work throughout, seeking to reconcile false dichotomies, heal human division,
and make whole the fragmented psyche.

A World of Chaos
Though exacerbated by the poem's being split neatly into two parts, it is difficult not to notice
the stark rendering of binary oppositions in "Christabel." The poem, as a whole, has been noted
as being split between night/day, nature/city, and male/female worlds. Similarly, the first part of
the poem seems to portray a clear divide between the protected city and the dangerous woods;
the natural and supernatural; the holy and unholy; and even between dreaming and waking. What
is interesting about all of these dichotomies is how, upon closer examination, each of them
breaks down. Though the city is well defended against armies (1.127-8), Geraldine has no
trouble penetrating its fortifications. Though there seems to be a clear divide between the natural
and supernatural, an unreliable narrator and ambiguous narration blur these lines—is Geraldine
carried over the threshold because she is some sort of evil creature, or is she just weak? Does the
ghost of Christabel's mother actually haunt the castle, or is her presence only felt psychologically
(and if so, does this make her any less real)? Does the fire leap up (1.158-9) because of
Geraldine's supernatural character, or is it merely affected by the breeze of her passing?

73

Similarly, while it seems easy to define Geraldine as evil, why is it that she demonstrates
moments of concern for Chnstabel (1 227-32, 1 255-9)^ 58 Even the states of dreaming and
waking, which appear clearly delineated (Bracy dreams his vision, Chnstabel goes to sleep after
her sexual encounter with Geraldine then awakes in the morning), are ultimately unclear—as is
demonstrated, for example, by Paul Magunson's reading of the text which sees the entire first
part as a dream 59
This sort of dissolution of apparent binary oppositions is a common theme in Coleridge's
writings and, as already discussed, an important part of "Mariner " Such oppositions portray two
poles in conflict Coleridge always sought the dissolution of oppositions by a right perception
which sees opposites as interpenetrating poles Where binary oppositions embody conflict,
interpenetration depicts unity This is precisely how religious imagination functions—"It
dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create, or where this process is rendered impossible,
yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify" {Biographia Ch 13)—it breaks down in
order to unify This same logic is at work in "Chnstabel," and is most evident in Coleridge's
employment of a patently untrustworthy narrator
The narrative of "Chnstabel" is cloaked in ambiguities, with a speaker who often
contradicts him or herself The narrator is, in many ways, the epitome of flawed human
perception (not false or bad per se, but corrupted and untrustworthy) It should come as no
surpnse when the narrator's repeated assertions and portrayals of apparently solid binary
oppositions fall apart upon closer examination The message communicated by this

Radley notes these moments ot concern and, though she sees Geialdme as having "obviously been commissioned
to pervert the goodness of Chnstabel" (540), she nonetheless asserts that these passages show Geialdme as "a
creatuie capable of love as well as of evil' (541)
In "Coleridge's Nightmare Poetiy" Paul Magnuson suggests that the entire first pail is only a dream, and that
Geialdme docs not become teal until after het bedroom encountci with Chnstabel

74

untrustworthy narrator is that things are not as they appear In the poem's opening the world
appears to be governed by binary oppositions, but by the power of reflection (which Coleridge
considered an important aid in attaining right perception) it is clear that things are not as they
seem
The sense of disunity m the world of "Christabel" is further heightened by the sense of
division or conflict that characterizes most human relationships in the poem Regardless of how
the relationship between Christabel and Geraldine is interpreted, the majority of critical readings
permit that there is a conflict between these women Likewise, Sir Leoline and Lord Roland are
divided by a conflict in their past Though Christabel's mother seems always to be with her (as a
guardian spirit), the two women have been separated since Christabel's birth when her mother
died Many critics have noticed a power play between Geraldine and Leoline that suggests the
conflict between masculine and feminine woilds, and there also seems to be a separation
between Leoline and his daughter—which can be seen in the former's harsh words to Christabel
in Part 2, but is also hinted at by the way that Christabel sneaks in and out of the castle, not
wanting to wake him up (1 164-5) Even Biacy finds himself in conflict as Leoline obstructs him
from acting on the strange dream he had the night befoie (2 650-2)
While the world of "Christabel" is characterized by division and disunity, perhaps the
more striking disunity of the poem is that of Christabel herself As I have already suggested, my
reading asserts Geraldine as a figure of Original Sin, and Christabel as a figure for innocence 60
These are not pure categories, however, as with most binary oppositions in the poem this one
also breaks down upon closer examination As William Ulmer has commented, Chnstabel's
The separation of Christabel and Geraldine at the stait of the text could be said to be a pioduct of then fatheis'
feud This becomes especially relevant to any leading of Geraldine as a symbol of Original Sin for, just as Original
Sin was mhented fiom the "fust father" (Adam), so too Geialdme, as Original Sin, is an enemy bequeathed to
Christabel by hei father

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moral state is that of "predominant virtue tainted by sin," while Geraldine, as Christabel's
double, is that of "predominant evil qualified by a residual good" (388). If Geraldine is a purely
evil character, then why is she strengthened when she drinks Christabel's wine (an act commonly
associated with the Eucharistic element) (1.220-3)? Why must she pray before joining Christabel
in bed (1.233-4)? Why does she hesitate with "a stricken look" before going to bed (1.255-63)?
And why is she portrayed as sleeping peacefully with Christabel as "a mother with her child"
(1.300-1)? At the same time, as many critics have wondered, why would the "pure," innocent
Christabel be outside the castle at midnight under a full moon? And why is she so secretive when
bringing Geraldine into the castle (1.164-71)?
The breaking down of the sin/innocence dichotomy is a somewhat troubling one for,
while most readings of the sexual encounter between these two women see something terrible in
the scene, the fact that it dissolves their binary positions and brings unity61 suggests that perhaps
this scene is not all bad. This suggestion is reinforced by the fact that the bedroom encounter is
framed as a wedding night—with Christabel carrying Geraldine across the threshold (1.129-34),
with the explicit mention of wedding bells (1.200-1), with Geraldine clothed (like a bride?) in
white, and with the taking of the Eucharist (1.190-3, 220-3) (a common part of a marriage
ceremony in both Anglican and Catholic traditions). This marital framing is an important
complicating factor when considering traditional views of the bedroom scene as Christabel's
"falling" into sin. This is especially true when one considers how positively Coleridge generally
portrayed the dissolution of binary terms, and then considers that the wedding night is

' This is further evinced by the fact that Christabel and Geraldine become more and more alike beginning in the
moining aftei their sexual encounter For example, Chnstabcl assumes serpentine qualities that were earlier
attributed only to Geraldine, while Geialdme takes on some of Christabel's innocent appearance

76

traditionally viewed as the point at which two become one—"a man shall leave his father and his
mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" (Gn. 2:24).
I suggest that the portrayal of the sexual encounter in "Christabel" as having elements
that are both grotesque and beautiful is representative of the fact that, for Coleridge, the human
soul is an admixture of the grotesque to the beautiful. Yes, there is something horrible and dark
about Geraldine, but if she represents Original Sin, then she represents the fact that there is
something horrible and dark in all of humanity. The union of the two, then, does not represent
the tragic fall of Christabel, but rather an admission that she has already fallen—for, as Andrew
Cooper has suggested, Geraldine is the sin that "is always already there" (90). Their union
represents not that fall of innocence, but the troublesome interpenetration of sinfulness and
innocence within the human soul.
From this point on, the two women are altered. Where Christabel earlier carried herself
with the boldness and naivety of one who believed herself to be innocent, and Geraldine was the
serpentine maiden who often collapsed from weakness, things change drastically in Part 2. Here
both women portray serpentine qualities (2.459, 583, 591), and Christabel is now the one whose
countenance sways from smiling, to trance-like, to panicked. Although sin and innocence have
both always been a part of Christabel's character, the sexual encounter with Geraldine marks the
moment when that reality first becomes apparent to Christabel. She is horrified by this revelation
(as attested to by her repeated prayers for forgiveness), and her sense of guilt strikes her mute.
While by all accounts this would seem a tragic turn of events, it is actually a positive move. By
bringing the disparate parts of her nature together, Christabel is at last in a position to do
something about it. Although it appears horrible, the union is really just the actualization of what
was already true. Christabel is at last seeing with a right perception.

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Two Imaginations
One of the most fascinating aspects of "Christabel" is that it is one of the few places in
Coleridge's work where both the primary and secondary imagination are so nakedly portrayed as
operating side by side. Christabel exemplifies the primary imagination, for it is her perception
that gives shape to and creates the world around her. Whether one sees Part 1 as a dream
sequence or reality, then, becomes immaterial, for in both readings Christabel gains the
perception (of herself as both innocence and sinfulness) that precipitates her awakening in Part 2
as a whole being. While her perception of herself has changed, however, her sight is not yet fully
right. At this point she is like the Mariner who, finally able to see the supernatural
interpenetrating with the natural, had not yet learned to love the reality he so recently learned to
see. Similarly, Christabel can now see the sinful part of her nature, yet she has not learned to
love the whole self of which sin is a part.62 Like Cain, who loved only that which fit into his
understanding of "goodness," Christabel is unable to love that part of herself that is associated
with evil.
The result of Christabel's inability to love her whole self is that, even though she is newly
unified, she is mastered by her sinful nature. It is Geraldine who now controls her power of

At the time of his wilting of "Chustabel," Coleridge's beliefs regarding Original Sin were a soit of blend of
Orthodox and Unitanan views Though he did not accept the idea of hereditary guilt as expressed by the Church of
England, he also could not entirely agree with Joseph Priestley's optimistic, Unitarian view of human nature In a
letter wntten during this period, Coleridge writes
Of GUILT I say nothing, but I believe most steadfastly in Original Sin, that from our mothers' wombs our
understandings arc darkened, and even where our understandings are in the Light, that our organization is
depraved, & our volitions imperfect, and wc sometimes see the good without wishing to attain it, and
oftener wish it without the eneigy that wills & perfoims—And for this mhcicnt depiavity, I believe, that the
Spirit of the Gospel is the sole cuie {Letters 1 396)
The unified Christabel represents this view of the human soul She is imperfect—her undeistandmg "daikened"—
yet she is also guiltless Accoiding to this view, her whole self (sin and all) is woilhy of love, even though it still
needs the pei fecting—"the sole cure"—that is provided by "the Spirit of the Gospel "

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speech (as I will discuss further in the next section) (2.620), and all of Christabel's energies are
now given not to gaining mastery over the part of herself that she seems to hate, but instead to
trying to divide herself once more by having Geraldine sent away (2.616-7). This desire to have
Geraldine exiled from herself should be understood in a negative light. This is made clear by the
fact that the acceptance of Christabel's plea would work against the unifying movement of the
entire poem. If Geraldine were sent away, Christabel would be rejecting an essential part of
herself, and the restoration of her father's relationship with Lord Roland (which is the original
sin of the poem) would be sabotaged.
Much like the Mariner, who needed both to see the natural and supernatural
interpenetrating, as well as to love that interpenetration, so too Christabel needs to see the
divinity and dust (the innocence and sinfulness) that make up her nature and love it. It was love
and charity toward Geraldine that first began the poem's movement toward unity. This
movement continues at the start of Part 2, when Leoline, inspired by the sight of his daughter and
his old friend's daughter together, extends a gesture of love and charity to Geraldine. It would
seem that this gesture is calculated to bridge the gap between Leoline and Roland who, though
once good friends, now stand "aloof, the scars remaining, / Like cliffs which had been rent
asunder" (2.421-2).
In Part 2, Leoline speaks a number of parables that seem to describe curses accrued by
individuals divided from human community. Separated from his old friend by a feud, and from
his wife by death, Leoline states that consciousness is a form of death—the morning prayer bell
"Knells us back to a world of death" (2.332)—and that disunity breeds madness—"to be wroth
with one we love, / Doth work like madness in the brain" (2.412-3). Both of these "curses" work
upon Christabel as she seeks to separate herself from Geraldine. Part 2 begins with a sort of

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symbolic awakening into a world of death for Christabel. It is Geraldine who wakes her just after
the matins bells and, as a figure for Original Sin, she is also intimately tied to death.63 Likewise,
as Christabel struggles against her recent union with Geraldine, she seems to have become
infected by a sort of madness. She swings violently between moods, sees a strange vision of
Geraldine, and is even heard hissing at a number of points. Just the previous night it was
Christabel who showed love and charity to Geraldine. It was Christabel who asked Geraldine to
join her for the night (1.120); it was Christabel who carried Geraldine—groom-like—across the
threshold (1.130-2); and it was Christabel who offered the sacramental wine to Geraldine (1.1903). When Christabel acted out of love, she found herself in the position of authority in the
relationship; however, when she acts out of shame or disgust toward Geraldine she finds herself
powerless and driven toward madness.
In Part 1, the primary religious imagination is evident in Christabel, working to bring
unity, and to dissolve oppositions through love. When that love is revoked, the imagination is
bound and the movement toward unity is halted. A similar progression can be observed in Bard
Bracy in Part 2. He too has his perception altered in a manner that drives the narrative toward
unity and, like Christabel, his imagination is also thwarted.
It is the secondary imagination that is present in the figure of Bracy, and which first
becomes evident when he recounts his vision of the entangled dove and serpent—a symbol he
interprets as representing Christabel and Geraldine. That his imaginative experience is different
from Christabel's, and that it is representative of the secondary imagination, is evinced in a
number of ways. While Christabel's imagination is manifested in her direct perception of the

3

That death is a consequence of the Original Sin is a common biblical precept—"Wherefore, as by one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" (Rm. 5:12).

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world around her, Bracy's perception is mediated by a dream—a representation secondary to
direct conscious experience That his dream presciently portrays the union of Christabel and
Geraldine (for he wakes from the dream just as the action of Part 1 is beginning, and thus before
it has taken place [2 555]) seems to suggest that there is more to this vision than just primary
human perception—perhaps an element of divine inspiration or poetic genius 7 Finally, Bracy's
imaginative perception differs from Christabel's in its expression Where Christabel's selfrevelation changes the way that she sees the world, Bracy's "revelation" has a public, rather than
personal, expression, his vision is a message to the larger community, not just a revelation for
himself In many ways, the bard Bracy is a Romantic poet 6 4
Much like the Romantic poet, Bracy receives a vision of uncommon revelatory insight,
which he is charged to share with the wider community via an artistic mode (l e , playing his
harp), for the general benefit of that community (I e , revealing Geraldine's true nature, and
ridding the woods of evil [2 528-54]) While my delineation between primary and secondary
imaginations is largely in keeping with the criticism of Thomas McFarland, my interpretation
differs fiom his on one important point 65 While McFarland admits that theological concerns
were of utmost impoitance to Coleiidge (Originality 96-8), he sees the imagination as subsuming
the place of the soul in scholarly discourse during the Romantic period (IX-XI) My reading of
"Christabel," far from replacing the soul with a secular conception of the imagination, suggests
that the imagination functions to clarify the nature of the soul Thus Christabel's right perception
revolves around her revelation of the tiue nature of her soul Similarly, Bracy's vision should be

The bard was an important poetic figure for many of the English Romantics (See Blake's "Introduction" to Songs
of Experience) and, Coleridge even lefencd to himself as a bard ('Songs of the Pixies" 36)
5
For more on my agreement and disagreement with McFarland see the Introduction, page 7

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read as a revelation of the nature of Christabel's soul—and not as a warning that Geraldine
should be expelled as most interpretations have suggested.
Bracy's dream has often been interpreted as having some sort of moral imperative—that
it warns of Geraldine's true nature and thus insists on the need for her to be expelled from the
castle. But what if the dream is not about moral imperatives but is actually an imaginative vision
whose purpose is simply to reveal the truth? The dream features a troubled dove with a serpent
"Coiled around its wings and neck" (2.549-50). After telling of the dream, Bracy asserts that he
has vowed to go to the forest, "With music strong and saintly song . . . Lest aught unholy loiter
there" (2.561-3). It is easy to see how these circumstances lead to the moral imperative
interpretation mentioned above. However, if Bracy's dream is, indeed, to be identified with the
imagination, then its primary purpose must be concerned with perception, and only secondarily
with moral action. The dream, then, represents a true vision of the character of Christabel. But
this is where many interpretations err, for they assume a simple interpretation that associates the
snake with Lucifer and/or fallenness, and the dove with innocence. While this interpretation is
not without merit, it should be noted that the Bible (the source of the above associations)
presents a more complex picture of serpents and doves than those allowed by these
interpretations.
Perhaps the best case in point is in the Gospel of Matthew, where Christ states, "Behold, I
send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as
doves" (Mt. 10:16). Two important things should be noted here: first, Christ actually exhorts the
disciples to be like snakes; and second, the reason for this exhortation is the fact that the disciples
are going into a world filled with wolves. In a perfect world, this snake-like quality (often
translated as "shrewd" rather than "wise") would not be necessary; however, because the world

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is a fallen one, both dove- and snake-like qualities are required. It should also be noted that the
dove is not always a good creature in the Bible. For example, Hosea decries the tribe of Ephraim,
claiming that it "is like a dove, easily deceived and senseless" (Hs. 7:11). The bearing of this
upon the text of "Christabel" is simple: Christabel's soul is in actuality both dove- and snakelike. While this may distress her (as it does the dove in the vision), the answer is not for some
external force (like her father or Bard Bracy) to cast away the snake—which would likely kill the
dove—but is, rather, for the dove to gain sufficient agency so that it is not overmastered by the
snake.

Confessions and Prayers of Hope
J. Robert Barth writes that although "much of [Christabel] portrays 'a world of death,' it is more
about love than about death . . . its underlying current is love and its movement is toward union"
(Romanticism 108). Working from Barth's premise, William Ulmer suggests that a fundamental
part of Geraldine's character "is her power to block and frustrate love" (377) and, by extension,
to frustrate this movement toward unity. This would certainly seem to be the case at the close of
Part 1. The poem's first act of unification occurs in the "marriage" of Christabel and Geraldine,
but the latter frustrates this act by binding the speech of the former (1.267-78). It is precisely the
binding of speech—for both Christabel and Bracy—that renders the religious imagination
impotent at the close of Part 2. This binding of speech is especially important when one
considers Coleridge's explicit link between the imagination and the divine creative act—an act
the Bible ascribes to God's having "spoke[n]" the world "into being" (Ps. 33:9).
The link between the imagination and speaking is evoked in "Christabel" by the
restriction of speech which is placed upon the two characters associated with imagination.

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Geraldine places Christabel under a spell which prohibits her from speaking about the true nature
of their encounter the night before (1.271-8). Bracy is doubly silenced, for not only is he
restricted from singing his song in the woods, but his confession of the vision is also rendered
impotent by Leoline's failure to fully listen—an action which results in Leoline's reversing the
dream's meaning and mistaking Geraldine for the dove. While the poem's "underlying current is
love and its movement is toward union" (Barth, Romanticism 108), the fragment ends with love
and union obstructed. Though the presence of religious imagination starts a movement toward
love and unity early in the text, this movement is halted by the restriction of creative speech.
In its unfinished form, "Christabel" ends in a state of tragedy. Imagination is silenced,
and all power seems to rest in the hands of the silencer. The lord of the castle, Leoline, lacks
right perception and has not submitted himself to the voice of the poet or to the individual of
imagination, his daughter.66 The fragment ends with Leoline as the only one speaking. He
chastises, and then "turns from[;] his own sweet maid" (2.653), enacting the disunification of
their family. At the same time he orders Bracy on a mission to go to Lord Roland, thus
reaffirming his decision to restrict the bard from singing his song in the nearby forest. The only
thing that could be perceived as a movement toward unity here is Leoline's leading of Geraldine
away from the throne room; however, this movement also creates disunity, for it requires the
division of Christabel and Geraldine.
Her speech prohibited, Christabel is utterly "reduced to passivity" (Magnuson 94), and
Bracy's state seems no better. At this point, it would seem that "Christabel" truly is "Coleridge's

Coleridge's works duung this period often paiodied and critiqued the government, and it seems likely that Leoline
functions as this sort of cntique of the English government Not only does his position of power in the text make
him a fitting symbol of political power, but also, the dual reference to a lion in his name seems to be a rcfeicncc to a
paiticulaily British powci (Leo being Latin for "lion," and "line" being phonetically similai to "lion")

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darkest account of a human soul's powerlessness to resist the forces of evil arrayed against it"
(Ulmer 399). Yet it is important to remember that the poem is not finished. Coleridge's
notebooks and repeated testimony show that he always intended to finish the poem. Thus it
should be kept in mind that the silencing of imagination is not the ultimate end of "Christabel,"
but rather the poem's central problem to be resolved. The poem is an allegory of imagination
and, as the imagination is that which "enables the divine and the human to 'interpenetrate'"
(Barth, Romanticism 118), it should be noted that Christabel and Bracy are not alone. While the
close of Part 2 portrays the "human soul's powerlessness," Christabel and Bracy have both
demonstrated that they are not entirely reliant upon their human souls alone. Christabel has
demonstrated this by her constant state of prayer (a state that continues even after her union with
Geraldine), and Bracy's reliance upon a higher power is demonstrated by the prescient nature of
his dream vision.
Some might consider Christabel damned, for she has been reduced to utter passivity,
madness seems to be claiming her and, as the poem will never be finished, it would seem that her
fate is to dwell in this state forever. Nonetheless, I agree with Barth that prayer functions in
"Christabel" as the sign that hope is not lost—for characters can only pray for that which they
believe can still happen. Thus, it is important to note that Christabel continues to pray during Part
2 and that, even when she cannot pray (as when the trance overtakes her [581-613]), the narrator
prays for her—"Jesu Maria, shield her well!" (2.582). Immediately upon being released from the
trance, she "Paused awhile, and inly prayed" (2,614) and, just a few lines later, the narrator
invokes the prayers of Christabel's mother for her child (2.628-33). Thus, even as the poem
reaches its darkest moments, the prayers surrounding Christabel reach their zenith of intensity,
suggesting that hope remains, and that there yet persists the possibility of Christabel's being

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freed or strengthened by a higher power. "Christabel" may end with the poem's figure of
political power ensuring Original Sin safe passage through the forest, but the poem does not end
without hope. There remain individuals of imagination whose strength rests in a power greater
than themselves.

Chapter 5
Dead Men Walking: The Curse and Crime of Cain in "The Giaour" and "Manfred"

"[L]ook— 'tis written on my brow! / There read of Cain the curse and crime " (Byron,
"The Giaour" 1057-8).

"I do not know what to believe—or what to disbelieve—which is the devil—to have no
religion at all—all sense and senses are against it—but all belief and much evidence is
for it" [1817 in a letter to Hobhouse] (Byron, Letters 5:212)

Both "The Giaour" and "Manfred" have proven resistant to critical interpretation. Few agree on
the nature of the protagonists' problems, or whether their deaths mark ultimate victory or defeat,
and there has even been considerable scholarly doubt as to the critical quality of these texts. 67 1
do not pretend to offer the explanation for either of these poems, but I suggest that critical
understanding of these poems can be greatly aided by a closer look at the underlying myth of
both "The Giaour" and "Manfred"—the story of Cain. Both of these poems' eponymous
protagonists are clearly labelled in their texts as having committed the crime of Cain, and both
also suffer under his curse. In many ways, "The Giaour" and "Manfred" pick up where the
biblical narrative of Cain leaves off: the fallen murderer is in exile, but he has been marked by
God so that no one can harm him. These similarities, in themselves, would not be enough to

67

For example, William Maishall's analysis of the accietive structure of "The Giaour" cnticizes many of the poem's
additions and even refers to the final discussion between the Giaour and the monk as "a rather pointless sequence"
(509) Similaily, Andrew Rutherfoid wntes ciitically of "Manfied" chaiacteuzing it—and "Cain" along with it—as
"blundcnng fiontal assaults" on "Orthodoxy" (92)

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press the comparison, except that direct and indirect allusions to Cain, his curse, and his crime
are present throughout these texts.
"The Giaour" and "Manfred" both depict the post-exile lives of Cain-figures, and follow
these men through to the end of their mortal existences. Considering the importance of the Cain
myth to these poems, it is significant that Byron later wrote his own account of the biblical
narrative of Cain. This is especially notable when one considers the twists that Byron added to
the biblical text. Where the biblical Cain disobeyed God and then killed his brother out of
jealousy, Byron's Cain is much more fleshed out, with more carefully delineated motives than
his archetype. Since the Giaour and Manfred are depicted as sharing such close affinity with
Cain, it will be helpful to note how their experience compares to the curse and crime of Cain as
depicted in Byron's account of the biblical antihero.
As I have already discussed in Chapter 3, the sin of Byron's Cain is his refusal to
privilege love over his pursuit of knowledge. Though Byron's Cain claims to love other
characters in the text (specifically his wife and son) and demonstrates a strong emotional concern
for some (as he does for Abel after striking the mortal wound, or for his son when he is placed
under a cypress tree), his love is always limited by his desire for freedom. Cain may feel love,
but he refuses to submit to it. Whenever love places limits on his freedom, he rejects love. This
is, ultimately, why he is exiled: he will not offer a pleasing sacrifice to God because it would
impinge on his freedom to choose his own sacrifice; he will not stay with Adah when she pleads
with him, because it would impede his freedom to pursue knowledge.
Like Cain, the fatal flaw of the Giaour and Manfred is their inability to "truly" love—that
is, to submit to the needs and wants of another. Because the past love affairs of these men are
clouded in ambiguity, it would be impossible to evaluate their past ability to truly love; however,

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an analysis of the Giaour's and Manfred's ability to love, as it is portrayed in their respective
texts, yields some interesting results. At the beginning of "The Giaour" and "Manfred," the only
objects of the protagonists' love are those who are already dead—and thus can make no demands
of them. When Manfred's love for the deceased Astarte actually does require something of him
(when the Witch of the Alps demands his worship in exchange for a possible meeting with
Astarte [2.2.155-60]) he refuses to submit because of the imposition this would make upon his
freedom.68 Besides sharing Cain's fatal flaw of being unable truly to love, a further similarity to
"Cain" can be found in the nature of these protagonists' curse. Byron's Cain is exiled from
human and divine community, and he even finds himself at odds with the natural world—"Now
art thou / Cursed from the earth" (3.1.471-2). Similarly, the sufferings of the Giaour and Manfred
amount to an exile from communion with the divine, the human, and the natural worlds. The
curses of Eve in Byron's "Cain" are particularly apt to describe the lives of the Giaour and
Manfred, and I explore these similarities further on.
By examining the curse and crime of Cain in Byron's version of the biblical narrative,
much light can be shed on the nature of the sufferings and eventual deaths of the Giaour and of
Manfred. While this study alone would be worth pursuing, however, it would be incomplete if it
did not address the psychological aspects of these texts—and particularly of "Manfred." Both
texts have been noted for the manner in which the male protagonists internalize an idealized
version of their deceased lovers. In many ways, these lost loves become fractured halves of the
Giaour's and Manfred's psyches. This fracturing is closely tied to the failure of religious
imagination—which is characterized by its movement toward unity rather than fragmentation. To

8

This deviation from the Faust myth—Manfred's lefusal to make a pact with the devil—has been oft noted as an
impoitant clement of "Manfred's" onginality (Chew 79)

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better understand this failure, reference to "Cain" will, again, be instructive, as will some
comparison to Coleridge's "Christabel." In the latter, love always functions to bring unity, and
the frustration of love results in fragmentation. As discussed in Chapter 4 this disunity is
epitomized in the fragmentation of Christabel's psyche. Byron's poems signal a similar trend
only with a twist. As in "Christabel," these poems portray the absence or abuse of love as
resulting in disunity and destruction, as well as in the fracturing of the protagonists' psyches.
Where Christabel is the good-half, trying to deny the existence of her "darker side," however,
Manfred and the Giaour are the opposite: they are the "darker halves" who have excised the good
(by placing all goodness in the unobtainable ideal of their dead lovers), making it impossible for
them to do, or be, good.
Ultimately, Byron's "The Giaour" and "Manfred" end with the same question as "Cain":
is there hope for the fallen? By reading these texts as post-exile continuations of the Cain myth
that end in the death of their protagonists, it would seem that the answer to this question is
negative; nonetheless, both works do contain threads of hope. Both protagonists are eventually
reunited with their other halves. Also, just before their deaths, they seem to find some form of
earthly solace and a small degree of human community—the very things that have evaded them
all of their lives. Could it be that they have found redemption prior to death and that death is, in
fact, a unifying experience? Perhaps. But it could just as easily be true that the poems end in the
deluded destruction of the protagonists—perhaps it is only their much-attested "madnesses" that
make them think they are going to their lovers in death. Ultimately, Byron remains sceptical
about redemption and damnation: he is unwilling to affirm anything about the final destinations
of his protagonists. As with "Cain," however, Byron does affirm the power and necessity of love,
as well as the damning effects of love lost or abused.

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The Curse of Cain
Though "Cain" was not written until four years after "Manfred"—and thus eight years after "The
Giaour"—it is useful for understanding these earlier poems because of the way it incorporates
and adds to the Byronic Cain myth that develops in these earlier poems. The curse of Cain, as it
appears in Byron's version of the story, can be broadly categorized as a loss of community with
the divine, human, and natural worlds. 69 This curse is made evident in "Cain" via two main
iterations: the curse spoken by the angel of God, and the curse spoken by Cain's mother, Eve.
The angel's curse highlights Cain's loss of communion with humanity and nature. It is
the angel who proclaims that the agriculturist, Cain, is now "Cursed from the earth," that the
ground will no longer "Yield [to Cain] its strength" (3.1.472, 474-5). The angel's curse then
places Cain at odds with the rest of humanity by proclaiming "a fugitive shalt thou / Be from this
day, and vagabond on the earth!" (3.1.475-6). Additionally, the angel suggests that Cain's own
son will one day wish to kill his father (3.1.480-92). This parricide is prevented, however, by the
final aspect of the curse, the mark of Cain, which is placed upon his brow "so that he may go
forth in safety" (3.1.495). Men may hate him, but they will not be allowed to kill him. Although
there is no explicit mention of a loss of divine communion here, it should be noted that, by virtue
of Cain's judgement coming from the mouth of an angel rather than God (as the biblical account
has it), the play implicitly suggests that Cain has been isolated from God.
Eve's curse is not spoken with the authority of the angel's curse, and because "Cain"
ends shortly after her speaking the curse, it remains unclear whether it actually takes effect in

For further discussion of the three-fold nature of Cain's curse, see Chapter 3.

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Cain's life. Nonetheless, Eve's imprecations against her son bear considerable similarity to the
curses of the angel:
May the grass wither from thy feet! the woods
Deny thee shelter! earth a home! the dust
A grave! the sun his light! and heaven her God! (3.1.441-3)
Eve's curse is expressed primarily through the language of exile from the natural world.
Nonetheless, there is also, clearly, an element of exile from the divine (3.1.443), and implicit in
Eve's denial of "a home" to her son is an exile from human community. Her request that the dust
deny Cain a grave (3.1.442-3) could be read as a further estrangement of Cain from the earth, but
it could also be seen as a curse of immortality—that Cain should "live in the pangs which others
die with!" (3.1.435), and be unable to escape his torture through death. This three-fold curse of
exile represents a reversal of the benefits of religious imagination—which is characterized by
movement toward unity and community. This curse is also directly linked to the sufferings of the
Giaour and of Manfred.
"The Giaour" opens with a eulogy for a lost Greece. Like a corpse which yet retains its
beauty, the Greek isles are depicted as "Edens of the eastern wave" (15) that have been despoiled
by humans who have "mar[red] [them] into wilderness" (51). Like Cain—the gardener exiled
into a wilderness—the Giaour inhabits a post-Edenic Greece that has become a wilderness. But it
was not always this way. Near the end of the text, the Giaour hints at his past, revealing his
adulterous affair with Leila, an Arabic beauty who was married to the Muslim lord, Hassan. For
this forbidden love, Leila is thrown from a cliff into the ocean, and the Giaour bears the guilt of
knowing that she died for him (1035). In revenge, the Giaour lays an ambush for Hassan and his
men, and kills all but one who is allowed to flee so that he might tell of Hassan's death. Despite

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attaining his revenge, the Giaour remains discontented. He spends the last of his days in a
monastery where he does not participate in the religious rites, but is allowed to stay on the
premises because of his considerable donation to the monastic order (816-7). Before his death,
the Giaour tells his story to one of the monks, and it is here that the Giaour's affinity to Cain
becomes apparent. The Giaour himself tells the monk to "look—'tis written on my brow! / There
read of Cain the curse and crime" (1057-8). He speaks twice of a burning of his brow (1261-2,
1312-3)—remember that Cain's mark is also accompanied with a burning sensation ("Cain"
3.1.500)—, and the monk explains that the Giaour is "mark'd . . . As death were stamped upon
his brow" ("Giaour" 794-7).
Besides this explicit comparison to Cain, the Giaour is further linked to Byron's version
of the biblical fratricide by his own curse. After the Giaour has wreaked revenge upon Hassan,
the Ottoman narrator curses the Giaour to spend eternity in the Palace of Darkness (750), but
before that, he is cursed to be sent to earth as a vampire (756). In this existence, he will be
damned to suck the blood of his "daughter, sister, wife," and also of the "most belov'd of all"
who blesses him "with a. father's name" (759, 768-9). This curse is a curious one. As one of the
earliest mentions of the word "vampire" in English literature, this passage has received
considerable attention, yet, within its own narrative it seems strangely disconnected from the
text. As far as one can tell, the poem ends without fulfillment of this curse, and the text does not
refer to the curse again after this point. As the final recorded utterance of the fisherman narrator,
however, the curse is given considerable prominence within the poem, and thus deserves closer
attention. The curse can be clearly divided into two parts. The first speaks of the eternal
separation of the Giaour from God—though in this case, a Muslim rather than Christian
conception of God. This is depicted in the narrator's mention of an eternal damnation in which

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the Giaour will "writhe / Beneath avenging Monkir's scythe" (747-8) and wander lost in the
Palace of Darkness (750). The second part of the curse depicts the ultimate example of a lost
communion with humanity, for the Giaour is sentenced to kill those humans who are closest to
him. Although this curse only bears passing similarity to the curse of Cain, the manner in which
the curse is fulfilled in the text makes its connection to Cain's curse undeniable.
Although it is possible that the Ottoman's curse is eschatological in nature, and thus not
to take place until after the events depicted in the text, I think this curse is better understood as a
poetic description of the Giaour's mortal existence from the point the curse is spoken, onward.
The Giaour's curse of separation from human community is depicted in that, after achieving his
revenge, the Giaour withdraws to a monastery—a place of isolation from the wider world—
where he lives among, but does not participate in the daily life of, the monks (802-3). The
vampire curse has already come true in the Giaour's relationship with Leila—she dies because of
him—and thus he avoids human community for the remainder of his life. It is difficult to say
whether this is because of a self-flagellating desire for isolation, or because he fears to bring
further harm to those he loves. Whatever the case, the remainder of his life is marked by
isolation from human community. Shortly before his death, the Giaour alludes to an old friend
whom he once cared deeply for, but will not speak to, and will not even pray for, for fear that he
might prejudice heaven against the man (1242-3). This avoidance of prayer demonstrates the
Giaour's lack of communion with the divine. By choosing not to pray, he loses an opportunity to
speak with God; his choice not to partake of confession (803) bars him from forgiveness; and his

Byron's notes describe Monkir as one of the angels who prepares the departed for Damnation, often forcibly using
his scythe to do so (note 748).

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choice not to partake of the sacrament of communion (815) demonstrates both his inability to
receive atonement and to "commune" with God.
Although the Ottoman's curse on the Giaour does not explicitly involve an exile from
nature, it should be noted that the imagery used to describe the Giaour's divine and human exile
is that of the destruction of nature. His vampiric drinking of blood is likened to a "draining of]
the stream of life" (760), and those whom he is to kill will be like flowers "wither'd on the stem"
(766). The Giaour's exile from communion with the natural world is further evinced in the text
by the fact that he comes to serve as a sort of un-creative force in nature. While the text early
identifies ancient Greece with Eden, the Giaour's presence seems to move nature away from that
ideal. While the breath of God gives life to dust, making the first man in the Bible (Gn. 2:7), the
Giaour is likened to the Simoom,71 "Beneath whose widely-wasting breath / The very cypress
droops to death" (284-5). Hassan's hall, which was once a sort of garden paradise where "Wealth
and Poverty" alike could find rest (344), is reduced by the Giaour to utter desolation, and is
described using words such as "Decay," "Gloom," "Grief," and "Desolation" (330-49). The
valley in which the Giaour lies in ambush for Hassan is likewise a place of un-creation where
"vultures whet their thirsty beak" (554), and "a river's wintry stream / Has shrunk . . . And left a
channel bleak and bare" (557-9).
Both the Giaour's stated curse and his actual experience testify to his suffering under the
curse of Cain which deprives him of community with God, humans, and nature. This is also true
of Manfred, whose curse is strikingly similar to the Giaour's. Like the Giaour, whose pre-curse
status as "free" is defined by "a few snatched moments of romantic love in a garden" (Franklin

The Simoom is a strong, dust-laden, suffocating wind that derives its name from the Arabic root, "to poison"
(OED).

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35), so too Manfred is portrayed as having fallen from an Edenic ideal which is characterized by
a romantic love affair 72 The opening speech of the play connects Manfred to a paradise lost and
anticipates Byron's later writing of "Cain," when Manfred states, "The Tree of Knowledge is not
that of Life" (1 1 12) Like Byron's Cain, Manfred has great knowledge, but has found that it
brings him no nearer to happiness As in "The Giaour," a spoken curse takes a central place in
"Manfred," and the experience of that curse makes up much of the action of the text
Manfred is a young Count with tremendous physical and intellectual powers, yet he feels
as though he has lived for ages, and he finds no solace in his many impressive accomplishments
or in human society "Manfred" begins in media res with the eponymous hero attempting to
commune with his dearly departed Astarte by seeking the help of various spiritual powers Each
of his attempts at communion with Astarte fails, however, and he ultimately dies in the company
of a devout Abbot It is suggested that his death brings him to his beloved Astarte, but this is not
definitively stated
Manfred appears already to be suffering under a curse at the start of the text—piesumably
begun after the death of his beloved Astarte—yet it is worth examining the spoken cuise that
occurs in the opening scene This curse, or "the Incantation" as it is often called, occuis aftei
Manfred's failed attempt to coerce the elemental spirits to summon Astarte from the dead It is
unclear who speaks Manfred's curse, it could be the Seventh Spirit, Manfred's subconscious,
Astarte, or none of these Nonetheless, the curse's authority is not weakened by the ambiguity of
its speaker The imprecations of this Incantation are relentlessly exacted upon Manfred, giving
them an aura of divine authorship Manfred's curse is essentially the same as those of Cain and

If it is true as most critics suggest, that Astaite is Manfred's sister then their relationship was especially Edcmc,
for Cain likewise mated with his sister

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of the Giaour—which are themselves essentially no different from the curses experienced by the
Mariner or by Christabel. Like these other curses, Manfred's curse is a reversal of the benefits of
religious imagination; it is disunity and fragmentation, resulting from a lack, or abuse, of love,
and depicted in a loss of communion with nature, humanity, and the divine.
The full content of the Incantation is more complex than can be adequately discussed in
the context of this chapter; however, at the risk of over simplifying a complex curse, I would like
to note that the sum of the Incantation's parts can be found in its final two stanzas—which also
mark the final stanzas of the first scene. Here the speaker lists Manfred's apparent failings—his
"false tears," poisonous lips, his "gulfs of guile," his "shut soul's hypocrisy," and his
"Brotherhood of Cain" (1.1.232-49)—and then compels Manfred to become his own "proper
Hell" (1.1.251). The final stanza elaborates on this living death, adding that it will be Manfred's
"destiny" not "to slumber nor to die" (1.1.254-5), even though he will wish for death (1.1.256-7).
Although this incantation does not spell out the details of the curse, it clearly marks it as a living
death—much like the vampiric existence of the Giaour, or the wandering exile imposed on Cain
by his mother's curse (may he "live in the pangs which others die with!" ["Cain" 3.1.435]). For
the details of the working out of this curse, further examination of Manfred's actual experience is
necessary.
Besides the explicit mention of "the Brotherhood of Cain" (1.1.249) in the Incantation,
Manfred is also likened to Cain when he is twice called a "child of Clay" (1.1.131, 133) and
when he refers to himself as "Half dust, half deity" (1.2.40). These terms bring to mind the
creation of the first man, Adam, out of dust or clay. Manfred's identification as the son of Adam,
marks him as part of the human race, but also links him further to Adam's more immediate son,
Cain. Manfred often borrows phrases from the biblical Cain, and much of the imagery employed

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by Manfred is later re-used by Byron in "Cain." For example, while Manfred is with the
Chamois Hunter, he sees blood on the brim of his cup and exclaims "Will it never—never sink in
the earth?" (2.1.22), bringing to mind the biblical Cain account:
And he [God] said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto
me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her
mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand (Gn. 4:10-11).
In the final Act, as Manfred enjoys an old memory of his Edenic past, he recalls the presence of
cypress trees (3.4.20). It is of note that cypress trees also make an appearance in "The Giaour,"
where drooping cypress trees symbolize the lost Eden of Greece (285), and in "Cain," where the
title character becomes upset that his innocent son should be placed to rest under a "gloomy"
cypress tree (3.1.3-4). Similarly, the destructive, middle-eastern wind, the Simoom, also receives
mention in all three texts. Added to these similarities with "Cain," is the fact that Manfred's
actual experience of his curse can be closely identified with the three-fold nature of Cain's curse.
Though Manfred seems once to have gained joy from nature—"My joy was in the
Wilderness, to breathe / The difficult air of the iced mountain's top. . ." (2.2.62-3)—the mature
Manfred finds no solace there. In fact, he tells the Witch of the Alps that "The face of the Earth
hath madden'd me" (2.2.39). Earlier in the text, Manfred speaks often of the beauty of nature
(1.2.9, 35, 36), but his estrangement from the joys of nature is made clear when he questions
nature—even calling the earth his "mother" (1.2.7)—asking, "Why are ye beautiful? I cannot
love ye" (1.2.9). Manfred's rejection of nature as a balm to his spirit functions as a rejection of
Romantic idealizations of the natural world, but it bears noting that this rejection derives from
his inability to commune with nature. Besides nature's maddening effect on him, and his
inability to love it, his lack of communion is also evident in the fact that he chooses to search for

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answers to his deepest longing not in the physical world of nature, but in the transcendent powers
behind nature This is a considerable twist on the Romantic ideal of communing with nature, and
even finding divinity within it, by passively experiencing the natural world Rather, Manfred is
only concerned with mastering the powers behind nature in order to see what they might offer
him Though he may speak with the elemental spirits and the Witch, all of whom are behind
nature, he has no real communion with them or with the natural world they represent
Perhaps the most obvious of Manfred's Cam-like sufferings is his exile from human
community He wanders the mountains in solitude, spurns the company of the Chamois
Hunter—who himself represents the ideal Romantic man—and even admits to the Witch of the
Alps that "From my youth upwards / My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men" (2 2 50-1)
Also to the witch, he explains that "with men, and with the thoughts of men, /1 held but slight
communion" (2 2 60-1) The only exception to this was Astarte, but she is dead, and thus
Manfred is completely alone

To cure this isolation he looks to supernatural powers, and to the

possible lesurrection of Astarte, but all three of his appeals to tianscendent powers fail His first
appeal, to the elemental spirits, is a plea for oblivion (11 144), and its failure ends in his avowal
to "lean no more on supeihuman aid" (12 4) His second and third appeals to the supernatural,
then, take the form not of deliverance from his living death (via oblivion), but of attempts to
summon up the spirit of Astarte In this Astarte comes to represent all of Manfred's hopes for
communion with humanity—for he has already stated that she is the only mortal he ever
communed with (2 2 59)—but the first of these attempts ends in utter failuie, and the second is
not much better Though Manfred is able to see Astarte in his final attempt, there is a barrier
73

Astaite is also the Greek name of a Mcditeiranean fertility goddess That Manfied's only point of connection with
humankind should come in the form of someone who is identified with a goddess highlights his sepaiation from
humankind

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between them that is, perhaps, best described as a lack of communion: he speaks to her but she
seems not to hear, and she speaks to him, but her utterance has no reference to what he longs to
know.
"Manfred" exhibits a striking blend of supernatural expressions, incorporating
Neoplatonic, Zoroastrian, and Christian elements into its cosmology. In the action of the play,
Manfred consults with beings representing each of these religions. In his essay "The
Supernatural Structure of Byron's Manfred" James Twitchell demonstrates a hierarchical Chain
of Being in the play, up which Manfred progressively works his way (607). Whether this
movement demonstrates a purely selfish desire to win back his joy and happiness, or Manfred's
"reaching] out into communion with the whole," through his attempt "to realize the harmony
and unity in nature" via "the attainment of this spiritual communion" (Chew 79), it is nonetheless
obvious that his attempts fail. What is interesting, however, is that for all of Manfred's apparent
communion with the supernatural, the one force that he never calls upon is the highest power.
Near the end of Act 2, Manfred alludes to a power higher than Arimanes, "the overruling
Infinite—the Maker / who made him [Arimanes]" (2.4.46-7). It is unclear who exactly this
"Maker" is, though it would seem to correspond with either the Christian God, the Zoroastrian
Ormazd, or the Neoplatonic One (Twitchell 612). Twitchell argues that, whatever the identity of
this Maker, his or her existence "established] the topmost or innermost limit [of Byron's Chain
of Being] as being Good and ultimately victorious," and that "even in this imperfect universe
redemption and salvation are possible to those who resist the compromise with evil" (612).
Despite this existence of an ultimate good, however, Manfred is unable to commune with it. His
conversation with Arimanes suggests that this Maker requires worship of those below him or her
(2.4.46-9) and, as Manfred demonstrated during his time with the Witch of the Alps, he will bow

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to no one (2 2 155-9) Thus Manfred only ever makes requests of those supernatural powers that
he feels are his equals or inferiors—and thus could not require his submission When the Abbot
tries to save Manfred's soul in Act 3, the latter, like Cain, echoes the biblical statement of
divinity ("I AM THAT I AM" [Ex 3 14]), asserting "wonder not that I / am what I am" (1512)

Manfred is, it would seem, his own god and, as a result, he never consorts with the Maker

Even at his death scene, he ignores the Abbot's plea to "Pray—albeit but in thought" (3 4 145)
In this final sequence, Manfred maintains his independence from the Maker (and all other
supernatural powers for that matter), however, despite these almost heroic attempts to remain
free, Manfred, in fact, remains "a cursed hero, doomed for all his independence" (McVeigh 604)

The Crime of Cain
The connections between Cain, and the Giaour and Manfred, are striking However, if it were
only the three-fold nature of their curses and a few passing references to Cain that bound the
Giaour and Manfred to their biblical counterpart, these similarities would be only of passing
interest What makes this connection to Cain of tiue scholarly interest is the implications that it
bears for our undei standing of the cnmes of the Giaoui and Manned and foi the way we
interpret their earthly demises
It is clear that the Giaour suffers from the curse of Cain, but a simple perusal of the
narrative provides little clue as to what his crime has in common with Cain's crime Most
readings of "The Giaour" see the forbidden love affair with Leila, or else the murder of Hassan,
as the Giaoui's crime However, a forbidden love affair has nothing in common with either the

As discussed in Chaptci 3, Byion's Cam also makes use of this divine self dcscnplion ("Cam" 3 1 509)

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biblical or Byronic account of Cain

and, while the Giaour is a murderer like Cain, there is

nothing to suggest that his murderous act warrants the judgment he receives—especially
considering that Hassan is no innocent Abel, but is himself a killer. I suggest that the crime of the
Giaour is not his illicit love affair, or his murder of Hassan, but rather his inability to love.
Like the Byronic Cain, the Giaour subordinates love to his own selfish desires. This is
evident in that, after Leila's death, when the joys of love are no longer available, the Giaour's
love is quickly perverted into hatred and self-pity. It is not love for Leila that leads him to
murder Hassan, but rather hatred for the man who removed the Giaour's earthly joy (645-54).
His love is not just poisoned by its turning to hate, however, but his conception of love itself
becomes perverted. Leila comes to represent, not the memory of a lost loved one, but rather "the
unattainable ideal in his internalized individualistic quest for self-completion" (Franklin 38). The
Giaour's selfish idea of love reduces Leila to "a ghostly presence in the consciousness of the
hero" (40), bringing about a splitting of his psyche: there is Leila, the unattainable ideal who
represents everything good about the Giaour ("My hope on high—my all below" [1183]); and
then there is the Giaour, the sinful exile who is driven to madness (1191, 1253) and daily
experiences a living death (276, 435-8, 912-5, 945-50). Because the Giaour has confined all
goodness to his conception of Leila, he seems unable to feel or act in any "good" way. At the
same time, Leila is reduced from personhood to the Giaour's "sole source for spiritual meaning
in earthly life . . . a secular form of Grace and a means of restoring the lost paradise on earth"
(Franklin 44). Daniel Watkins notes that the Giaour "invests his entire moral being in her angelic
or nonhuman state" and that he "elevate[s] her into an ideal at the expense of her humanity"

75

It should be noted that Byron docs allude to the incestuous nature of Cain's love for Adah; however, there is no
implication whatever that this relationship is sinful within the context of the play.

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(885) By placing his own desire for peace before his love for Leila (exemplified in his search for
revenge and his conversion of Leila's memory into a "secular form of Grace" [Franklin 44]), the
Giaour has reduced his lover's memory to a personal "crutch" that, in reality, becomes his curse
Tn the end, Leila is debased and the Giaour suffers, unable to do good and forever longing for a
peace (an Eden) that he cannot regain Leila's goodness, confined as it is in his abstract
perception of her memory, is impotent to help him with his torturous existence, and his twisted
conception of his loss of her even becomes—in a very Geraldine-hke image—"A serpent round
my heart

wreathed" (1194) The Giaour's crime is not his affair, and it is not murder The act

that makes him guilty like Cain, and that brings Cain's curse upon him, is his subordination of
love to his own personal pursuit of fulfillment
In terms of narrative, "The Giaour" bears considerable resemblance to "Manfred," which
similarly features its Cain-like protagonist's exile from human and divine community, and his
lifelong suffering from the knowledge that he is responsible for the death of his lost love Also
like "The Giaour," "Manfred" ends with its hero's death and apparent reunion with his lost
love,7 both occuinng shortly after a conversation with a holy man Though similar to the
character of the Giaour, Manfied bears even more similarities to Cain than the foimer Like
Byron's Cain, Manfred holds audience with spiritual powers, and even journeys into their realm
There aie also numerous hints that Manfred's lost love, Astarte, was his sister, which creates a
further point of comparison with Cain, whose mate was also his sister

5

There are two leasons that I suggest Manfied is reunited with Astarte First, by dying he joins Astarte in her
deathly existence (if not also in some soit of afterlife) Secondly, the ghost of Astaite tells Manfied that his "eaithly
ills" will end on the day he dies (2 4 152) Since his earthly ills are self-descnbcd as being a result of his sepaiation
horn Astaite, it might be assumed that he is reunited with hei in death

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Like the Giaour, Manfred seems clearly to locate his crime in the fact that he caused the
death of his lover—"I loved her, and destroy'd her!" (2.2.117). However, while both men are
guilty of this "sin," it is not the crime that earns them their hell. Being present at the death of a
lover, and being unable to stop that death, can hardly be the crime that earns one a place in "the
Brotherhood of Cain" (1.1.249). Manfred's life is clearly a living hell. His descriptions of the
Alps are hellish—
The mists boil up around the glaciers; clouds
Rise curling fast beneath me, white and sulphury,
Like foam from the roused ocean of deep Hell. . . (1.2.85-7)
—and he even says that "There is a power upon me which withholds / And makes it my fatality
to live" (1.2.23-4). He later tells the Chamois Hunter that he has "the fierce thirst of death"
which goes "unslaked" (2.1.48), and that his "days and nights [are] imperishable, / Endless, and
all alike" (2.1.53-4). Like the Giaour, Manfred is in exile in the wilderness, and is suffering from
the curse of Cain, yet there is no clear connection between his stated crime and that of Cain.77 As
with the Giaour, I suggest that Manfred's crime, like Cain's, is actually a crime of perception. By
twisting Astarte's memory into an unobtainable ideal, he dehumanizes her, and thus fails to truly
love her. As with the Giaour, he places all goodness in his conception of his lost lover, which
makes it impossible for him to feel or act in any positive manner. In doing this, he fractures his
own psyche, relegating all goodness to his conception of Astarte and leaving himself with only
the bad. Just as Christabel's refusal to accept her "sinful half results in the creation of the
destructive, independent being, Geraldine, so Manfred's fragmented psyche results in the

7

It could be argued that, by causing his sister—assuming that Astaite is his sister—to die, he has become a soit of
fratucidc, howcvci, as with the Giaour, the descubcd crime docs not seem to fit the punishment

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creation of a self-destructive being. The difference is that Manfred's goodness is excised to an
abstract realm and it is only the "darker h a l f that lives and breathes on the earth. Astarte
becomes his "Romantic epipsyche, a female counterpart of Manfred" (McVeigh 611), and thus
functions to keep him in exile from heaven (or even any sort of heaven on earth) by making
"goodness" unattainable. Throughout the play, Manfred dehumanizes Astarte by making her into
an idealized being. Thus, like the Giaour, his love is perverted into something selfish that
enslaves him and debases the memory of his lover.

" . . . something worse than death"?
One of the most striking of Eve's imprecations against her son is the curse that "death itself wax
something worse than death" (3.1.434) upon Cain. "Cain" gives no indication as to whether its
title character suffers something worse than death when he dies, and "The Giaour" and
"Manfred" are likewise ambiguous on this issue. Although the rest of Eve's curses seem to have
wreaked themselves upon these men, Byron remains silent about whether they undergo every
curse, or manage to escape this final one. I end this chapter, then, by returning to the question
with which it began: is there hope for the fallen?
In Chapter 3 I conclude that Byron ultimately left the ending of "Cain" ambiguous,
refusing to commit his text for or against the idea of Cain's damnation as "beautiful." In "The
Giaour" and "Manfred" Byron accomplishes much the same effect. I frame these texts as
"second halves" of the Cain narrative, and as such, one might think that they would provide the
missing ending that the sceptical Byron avoids in "Cain." In actuality, however, these second
halves of the Cain narrative serve only to describe the Cain-figure's death—they remain
thoroughly sceptical about what comes next.

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Critics have reached many conclusions about the nature of the Giaour's, and especially
Manfred's, deaths. Daniel McVeigh argues that "Manfred's death is self-redemptive" (610), and
Samuel C. Chew's classic exposition of "Manfred" asserts that its "chief message is one of
encouragement and hope," as it "tells of the triumph of mind over matter, of soul over body, in
that conflict which a dualistic conception of the universe implies" (Chew 84). In contrast,
Andrew Rutherford writes that no one could possibly believe Chew's claim about the poem's
chief message (88). At the same time, while Alan Rawes sees Manfred's death as the beginning
of Byron's search for "answers"—a "beginning that rejects transcendental answers to human
problems, but looks instead to resources to be found within human existence" (128)—Stephen
Behrendt sees the play as a sceptical attack on intellectual answers, which demonstrates "that
'calm' does not exist in the universe and in the self and that it is experienced not through the
metaphysics of philosophy but through the agency of human passion" (124).
I suggest that the reason for so many contradictory explanations of the ending of
"Manfred"—not to mention the ending of the "The Giaour"—can be found in Byron's
scepticism. Byron seems to have purposely kept both doors open. The Giaour and Manfred are
damned to hell, even as they have the possibility of heaven before them. Though the texts seem
to end tragically—both men lose their lovers, suffer hellish mortal existences, and ultimately
die—there is yet hope. Both men die confident that they will be reunited with their lovers. The
Giaour has seen an apparition of Leila who has beckoned him to join her (1298-9). Manfred has
also seen an apparition of his lover, and, though she does not answer him whether they shall
meet again, Manfred's peaceful composure in the next scene (3.1.6-8) suggests that he believes
they will—or at least that he will find rest from the guilt he feels about her death. While these
ghostly visitations could easily be accounted for as products of the madness that both characters

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attest to being plagued with, there is one further piece of evidence that lends some credence to
their hope. The final scene of both texts evinces a reversal of the character's movement toward
fragmentation and disunity.
In the final scene of "The Giaour," the eponymous protagonist tells his story to a monk,
who seems to have little care for the Giaour. The monk notes that the Giaour has only been
allowed to stay at the monastery because of his generous gifts, and asserts that, were he Prior,
then "not a day / Should brook the stranger's further stay" (818-9). By the end of the tale,
however, the Giaour thanks the monk for his "generous tear" (1322), and consigns the care of his
final remains to the monk (1324-5). Though a small detail, this demonstrates a slight movement
on the part of the Giaour toward human communion. The fact that he takes the care to confess
his tale—he even calls the monk his "Confessor" (1320)—and that the previously impervious
monk is moved to tears, suggests some sort of communion. By labelling this act a confession, the
Giaour also demonstrates movement toward divine communion, for it was earlier stated that he
never "before confession chair / Kneels" (803-4). Finally, if the Giaour's treatment of Leila's
memory is read as a division of his psyche then his return to her, whether a spiritual reality or a
mad fantasy, represents the reunification of his psyche. In the end, then, though the text is silent
about the Giaour's afterlife, there is certainly evidence to suggest that his final day marks a
turning point back toward unity and communion.
Similarly, Manfred's final hours seem to mark a turning point in his story. Once assured
of his imminent death, Manfred remarks that he feels "a calm upon me . . . which till now / Did
not belong to what I knew of life" (3.1.6-8). Shortly afterward Manfred breaks into what sounds
like a psalm of praise to the sun. This marks a return to his previous communion with nature as
he tells the sun "As my first glance / Of love and wonder was for thee, then take / My latest

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look" (3.2.25-7). Just a little later, Manfred is found no longer wishing for oblivion, but actually
revelling in an old memory (3.4.10). Perhaps the strongest evidence of Manfred's reversal
toward unity and communion can be found in the final lines of the play when, as he lies dying,
he asks the Abbot to take his hand (3.4.149). Numerous critics have noted this final scene as an
ultimate rejection of dogmatic or Christian religion by Manfred (Chew 82; McVeigh 610;
Watkins 886-7). While it is true that Manfred is never portrayed as speaking to the Maker, and
that he even rejects the concept of a human mediating on his behalf (3.1.54-5) (possibly a
rejection of Christ), the fact that he asks the Abbot to take his hand suggests at least a movement
toward human communion. Considering that the Abbot's words immediately before this were a
request for Manfred to "Pray—albeit but in thought" (3.4.145), this seems to open up the
possibility that perhaps Manfred does, indeed, find some sort of divine redemption before he
dies.
Although both "The Giaour" and "Manfred" close with some evidence of religious
imagination at work in the respective protagonists, the effect of this movement is ultimately
"trumped" by the scepticism of the poems' endings. Perhaps both characters do find unity,
wholeness, and redemption before dying, but this means little if there is no life after death, if
their accepted cosmologies prove wrong, or if, as Cain often fears, there is a Christian God, but
he is either not fully good or not fully powerful. As with "Cain," it would seem that the only real
affirmation that can be gleaned from these texts is the supremacy of love. When love is "right," it
creates an Eden on earth. When love is abused or lost, it perpetuates hell. When both the Giaour
and Manfred are disposed to act, even in a minor way, out of love—as depicted in the Giaour's
confession, or Manfred's taking of the Abbot's hand—unity and communion may indeed be
regained.

Closing Remarks

My interest in the "supernatural" works of Coleridge and Byron was first piqued when I noticed
the recurrence in these texts of "undead" characters—that is, of human characters that walked the
natural earth yet seemed unable to die My early explorations of these characters led me to the
conclusion that, though they still walked the earth, they were damned The personal hell
experienced by each character was deserved, yet they were peculiar for, in each case, damnation
seemed escapable Coleridge's and Byron's undead characters were strikingly similar in that
each seemed to have earned its damnation as the result of faulty peiception, yet seemed capable
of escaping that damnation by acquiring a clearer vision of the cosmos
For Coleridge, all humans exercise imagination as they perceive the world around them
This perception is never totally clear, and it is only via reflection, prayer, and the enlivening act
of the secondary imagination that the individual is able to move closer to clarity Ultimately, this
movement toward clauty allows the individual's constitution of the external woild to become
more divine, and thus moves that individual into closei communion with God The Colendgean
imagination is fust and last a leligious faculty, foi its purpose is divine communion, and its effect
like the definition of religion, is concerned with community 78
While Byron did not concern himself with writing abstract theonzations regarding the
imagination, and some of his works—most notably Don Juan—criticize various Romantic
tropes, including some conceptions of the imagination, his works nonetheless evince a sense of
the religious imagination that is not unlike Coleridge's Byron's repeated return to the Cam myth
As noted eaiher, one of the primary definitions of lehgion denotes community—it is "the condition of belonging
to a religious order" (OED)

109

demonstrates his interest in concepts such as communion, exile, fallenness, redemption, living
hell, and damnation. An examination of Byron's Cain figures demonstrates that, though Byron
remained highly sceptical about the nature and existence of both God and the hereafter, he
nonetheless privileged—like Coleridge—a creative perception of the world that is governed by
love and that draws the individual into community and into psychological unity.
Characters like Cain and the Mariner demonstrate the dangers of purely logical pursuit.
Although Byron was less certain than Coleridge about the nature of the noumenal, he
nonetheless shared the belief that reason alone could not bring peace, nor could it make sense of
human experience. The damnation of my title, then, refers to the personal hells of individuals
who attempt to make sense of human existence without privileging love or feeling. The beautiful
thing about these damnations is that they have corrective potential to lead individuals into a
union of reason and feeling, of knowledge and love, that "builds a Heaven in Hell's despair"
(Blake, "The Clod & the Pebble" 4).
Like "Mariner" and "Cain," the narratives of "Christabel," "The Giaour," and "Manfred"
explore the concepts of damnation and of religious imagination. These three works are of special
interest, however, because they provide only a glimpse of the story arc experienced by their
characters, and thus provide a greater focus on the events portrayed. These characters are
"damned" from the beginning of their texts and, at their end, are never clearly delivered from or
surrendered to that state. These characters represent both a Byronic and Coleridgean conception
of human existence as a "wandering in those desert regions without Paradise" (McVeigh,
"Cainne's Cynne" 287). Regardless of the eschatological fate of the individual, it is the
occupation of the imagination to determine whether their desert wandering will be a damned or a
blessed one. I suggest that they are "beautifully damned."

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